No fewer than 247 retired officers of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Councils and Local Education Authorities (LEAs) are set to receive the sum of 1,284,000,000.00 naira as their retirement benefits.
Director FCT / Area Council Staff Pension Board, Nanzing Nden, who said already, the FCT treasury department is processing the vouchers, which covers payments to beneficiaries of pensions up to April, 2019.
He said the payment was one of the approvals the board got from the former FCT Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, before he left the office.
Briefing the media on some developments within the pension administration system in the FCT, he also revealed that the Board has total liability of 138 million naira as outstanding liability for 31 files it received from May to date.
According to him, “Already, the FCT Treasury is processing the payment, but the retirees would have to be patient to allow the accounts people do the necessary processing of the vouchers and so forth before payments are made.
“I can assure that within a reasonable time, the payments will be made, and the reason is that we are talking about over two hundred files, which we need to go through, to ensure everything is done well.
“As at today, we only have 31 files that have been sent to us from May to date, with total liability of N180 million, which is outstanding. Apart from that, we don’t owe any retirement benefits to pensioners in the FCT.”
“We are going to start an advanced payment system or payment in advance to those, who are retiring from our system.
“We receive an average of N300 million from the Area Councils and FCTA for management of pension, which is paid directly into our TSA account and managed by the FCT Treasury. So we have the funding capacity to meet our obligations.”
He also hinted that from now on-ward the FCT Area councils Pension Board would be a reference point to other systems and expected that they work hard to meet up to the expectations of the pension retirement system.
