Pension Bureau to disburse N3.1bn gratuity, death benefits to beneficiaries in Kaduna

From Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The Kaduna State Pension Bureau has disclosed that it is set to begin verification payment of gratuity and death benefits of beneficiaries from allocation of 3.1 billion Naira to the Bureau for disbursement.
The Executive Secretary of the Bureau, Prof. Salamatu Idris Isah, who disclosed this during a press conference with journalists in Kaduna, yesterday, also allayed the fears of the people that no single file will miss.
Isah assured the beneficiaries that the payment principle is about first in, first served, adding that the delay in sighting names on the list for the verification payment exercise did not amount to a missing file in the actual sense of it.
According to her, the verification payment team from the bureau will move to the three senatorial zones of the State as part of processes of final payment of benefits to the beneficiaries.
Recall that the State governor, Uba Sani had a fortnight ago announced the allocation of N3.1 billion to the State Pension Bureau for payment of gratuity and death benefits for pensioners and the families of the deceased in the State.
The Bureau boss said: “People complaining about their names or files missing may not understand the workings here. We have been paying gratuity and benefits, and as I said earlier, we have a principle of payment which is first in, first served.
“What it means is that when your file is being processed, when it comes to the pension bureau, the date that your file is being processed is registered against your name. People say they retired in 2015, but before, the file that is being processed is reading 2016 or 2017.
“ So, it is one thing for you to say you retired in 2015, and it is another thing for us to have gotten your file that period. So there is nothing like a file missing. If we bring out list is based on first in, first served. Everybody’s turn will come as we continue with the verification exercise. No file is missing in the actual sense of it.
“If you have not seen your list it means we have not come to your name yet as the first in, first served principle. We are doing payment batch by batch, the State is batch 22, the local government is batch 20, and the new contributory pension is batch 25. So we do payment batch by batch. Even if any batch has not come forward for payment at the time they are needed, their money is with us in the bank, and whenever they come for payment we do verification payment and pay them their benefits.
“We have a team from the pension bureau to move to the three senatorial zones to do verification payments to the retirees and families of the deceased by next week. We say next week because we give this week for the people to identify their names on the list we have pasted. Then next week we start verification payment.
“In the last two weeks, we all heard the State governor, Uba Sani allocating N3.1 billion to the State Pension Bureau for payment of gratuity and death benefits for pensioners and the families of the deceased in the State. Out of that amount, N2.6 billion is allocated to the payment of retirees in the old scheme, while N100 million is allocated to retirees in the ministries.
“And we have scheduled the list for payment based on first in, first served, that is the principle we are going to use for the payment. You have heard the pensioners saying they are in queue; so that is the queue we are going to follow to get the list. So for this list, we are coming out with a list of 1051 people for both retirees and death cases. For example, the total number of local government retirees, we are going to pay is 542 beneficiaries, while in the State’s old scheme, we are paying a total of 231 beneficiaries. So that gives a total of 773 beneficiaries.
“For the new scheme which we allocated N500 million we are paying 178 beneficiaries. You will realise that the N500 million will not be as much as we have in the old scheme of N2.6 billion. So this is what we have. The list has already been circulated.”