Giving succour to pensioners

The question that looms large in our consciousness as we contemplate the daunting responsibilities before the Pensions Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) is whether the organisation will be able to cope. PTAD was essentially established as an integral part of the Pension Reform Act of 2004. It was created to take over the welfare of pensioners who did not transit into the new pension scheme. By the latest count, over 378 federal agencies are under PTAD. Evidently, this number of pensioners is huge and we daresay even monumental.

It is in view of the immediate foregoing that we are sceptical about PTAD’s ability to cope. Even the director-general of PTAD, Nellie Mayshak, appeared to have appreciated the enormity of the challenge when she revealed that she did not inherit a single database on assumption of duty.

Therefore, to succeed, PTAD must start at the level of fundamentals. In other words, it should have in its possession a comprehensive database of all the pensioners who retired from the various agencies of the federal government.

However, it is possible to contend that despite the odds, PTAD has succeeded to a certain extent. It is, for instance, reported that in a sectoral context, PTAD has successfully carried out a mini-verification exercise of retired workers from the various steel rolling mills in Jos, Katsina and Osogbo. It was also reported that at the end of the July 2014 exercise, a total number of 1,401 workers were placed on the payroll of the PTAD for monthly pension payments.

Even on this optimistic note, we urge a measure of flexibility and caution as regards PTAD’s operations. We refer here to pensioners who retired from the university system. In this context, we think PTAD should not re-invent the wheel. Issues regarding payment to pensioners in an organised and unique sector like the university can be tackled, at least initially, by relying on the data provided by the respective universities. We urge here that PTAD can easily take the money from the appropriate federal agencies, as it did recently, and transit same to the various universities. Subsequently, and in the meantime, PTAD can go about the task of building up its database on this category of pensioners. Invariably, such a process will take some time.

And this is why PTAD may want to mull over the subsisting option of leaving the current system in place where universities are paid through agencies like the Budget Office, Accountant General’s Office and the CBN, which ultimately remits the money to the various banks that in turn alert the university pensioners.

On another note, we are worried about the attitudinal profiles of PTAD personnel. There are, for instance, indications that more often than not telephones calls from pensioners are either not answered or callers are treated shabbily. This is not good enough. Workers in PTAD should appreciate that they are dealing with a very vulnerable component of our population. These are elderly people whose sweat and commitment have been used to build up Nigeria. Therefore, one veritable way the efforts of these senior citizens can be appreciated is to treat them with a measure of decency and courtesy.

We are also worried about the fact that a number of personnel who were recruited into PTAD have an ambiguous status. Questions are currently being raised about their age and the regular appointments which they hold. The sooner this and other related issues are resolved, the better.

And even at the structural level, there is also a case for worry. For an organisation whose responsibility is so large, it is disturbing that till date, there is no governing board which would be able to give general guidelines to the management. As it is, the management is virtually answerable to nobody but itself. Here is hoping that as soon   as a minister of finance is appointed, a governing board and its chairman will be appointed. What obtains at the moment is a recipe for anomy and dysfunction.

We therefore urge a quick resolution of these issues so that PTAD will be better placed to live up to its sacred mandate and responsibility of bringing succour to our beleaguered pensioners.