• Over 12,000 retirees may be affected
The National Pension Commission (PenCom), has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to make available N114billion to settle accrued benefits and pension increases of about 12,000 Federal Government retirees
If this is not accomplished, more than 8,193 retirees and death benefits of 4,847 deceased employees of the federal government would be denied their benefits.
PenCom Director-General, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu who made this known in a report titled, “Introductory Notes to the President” made available yesterday, detailed the challenges encountered in the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS). She said the payment of retirement benefits under the Scheme to retirees, as well as death claims to beneficiaries of deceased employees, were regular and timely except for the delays being experienced in the settlement of accrued benefits of FGN retirees and deceased employees, whenever there are delays in the funding of the Retirement Benefits Bond Redemption Fund by the FGN as is the case in 2012, 2014 and 2015.
She said N483.33 billion has been released into the Retirement Benefits Bonds Redemption Fund Account by the FGN, which was invested by the Central Bank of Nigeria and yielded N7.71 billion between 2006 and March 2015.
Consequently, N490.09 was paid as accrued pension rights to 81,764 retirees and 15,244 deceased employees from inception to March 2015.
She however noted that the Federal Government is yet to release monthly mandates for the payment of accrued rights for September to December 2014, and April to August 2015 amounting to N35.30 billion.
Meanwhile, sha said the accrued benefits of 8,193 retirees and death benefits of 4,847 deceased employees amounting to N48.39 billion were processed for the period, February to August 2015, but were yet to be settled by the FGN.
She stated that this clearly shows that even if the total outstanding monthly mandates were release there would still be a shortfall of N13.09 billion.
In addition, the total mandate for September to December 2015 was N20.08 billion while the total accrued benefits for the period was N23.12 billion, which left a shortfall of N3.04 billion. Thus, even if all the mandates for the period September 2014 to August 2015 were released, there will still be underfunded to the tune of N16.13 billion, she said.
To this end, the PenCom DG called for immediate settlement in order to avert crisis in the industry.
She said: “In this regard, therefore, Mr. President is hereby respectfully invited to note the need for immediate settlement of N35.3 billion arrears by the Federal Government on accrued benefits for the months of September to December 2014 and April to August 2015.
No comments:
Post a Comment