About 500 parastatals and agencies which were part of the insured pension scheme and who had their Boards of Trustees selected from within the organisations had complained of irregular payment of pensions by the insurance companies.

Director-General of the National Pension Commission (PenCom), Muhammad Ahmad, disclosed this in Abuja, recently at a stakeholders' meeting on the proposed pensioners verification exercise.

He said "It is pertinent to state that approximately 500 Federal Government parastatals under the government ministries, departments and agencies, which have their pensions managed by the Boards of Trustees selected from within the organisation have expressed serious dissatisfaction with the lack of timeliness and infrequency of payments from insurance companies that are responsible for such payments under the agreed terms of engagement.

"The insurance firms on the other hand placed the blame on the federal government, claiming that there was irregular and insufficient premium payments to meet the pension obligations."

Ahmad, who was represented by the PenCom's Commissioner, Technical, Ms. Eyamba Henshaw, informed that the decision to conduct a fresh pensioners' verification exercise was to resolve the problem of discrepancies in claims permanently, and eliminate the problem of ghost pensioners.

PenCom is planning to conduct a fresh biometric verification of all pensioners of Federal parastatals who retired under the old Pay-As-You-Go Defined Benefits scheme. He assured that PenCom had worked out detailed arrangements to ensure that pensioners did not have to go through stress to be verified.

The biometric verification, he explained was Government's way of effectively responding to the problem as, according to him, at the end of the exercise, the specific amount owed each pensioners would be determined.

He also said a successful verification exercise would make it possible for government to adequately budget for pension liabilities, annually, thus ending the irregular premium payment syndrome.

However, the PenCom boss regretted that of the 500 organisations to be captured during the exercise, only 174 had submitted useful data which had been processed into a quantified database of pensioners.

"This data will form the basis for the planned validation and subsequent verification exercise in order to ascertain the actual number of living pensioners, the monthly pension liability and the arrears of pensions owed to the pensioners," he added.

The verification, he said, had been divided into two phases, with the first dealing with documentation and therefore not requiring the physical presence of pensioners. It is to be followed by the biometric and bio-data enrollment that would require physical presence of pensioners.

"The entire exercise was planned this way so that there would be minimal or no discomfort to the pensioners when the actual verification exercise commences," Ahmad said.

Parastatals under the Federal Ministries of Education and Health would be assessed. This would be followed by those of the Federal Ministry of Transport and others.

The PenCom's Commissioner in charge of Inspectorate, Dr. Musa Ibrahim, said the exercise would eliminate all ghost workers by capturing only living and genuine pensioners. He therefore urged all stakeholders to cooperate with government officials charged with the responsibility of the verification.