Police retirees in Akwa Ibom State have lauded the Federal Government over the recently introduced screening procedure undertaken by the Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) saying that pensioners were not subjected to inhuman treatment during verifications.
Jonah Ekpo, chairman, association of retired police officers of Nigeria stated this during the nationwide verification exercise for police pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS) in Uyo, the Akwa Ibom State capital.
Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) is an organ of the Federal Government established in 2013 to take care of pensioners who did not transit to contributory pension scheme.
Under the arrangement, the exact number of genuine pensioners would be ascertained, ghost names would be detected and those who had been left would be included using the barometric capturing machine.
It was gathered that the exercise which has been undertaken in other zones of the country has already saved the Federal Government of more than N1.2 billion.
Ekpo noted that, the whole exercise has been fast and smooth, adding that, since the coming on board of PTAD in the past one year, it has been success stories for police pensioners.
“This is the first time police verification exercise is done the way it should be done. I retired in 1991 and for 24 years that I have been attending this exercise, this is the first time canopies and chairs are provided for us to sit and are even served food and water to drink”, he said.
He said more than 500 persons out of the expected 700 have so far been attended to during the four-day exercise.
A lawyer and Chief Superintendent of Police who retired in 2004 said, “I have attended verification exercises for about three times before now, it used to be difficult and un-interesting exercise. It used to be tiring and people used to stand for hours without adequate attention, people used to faint during this exercise, but here, we are given seats and even water and food to eat; this has transformed the exercise. Staff of PTAD are friendly to us, I plead the status-quo be sustained”.
Some of the retirees however appealed to the Federal Government to decentralise the exercise to make it easy for pensioners to take part in the verification programme in each state of the federation.
It was gathered that there are plans by the directorate to open offices in all states of the federation to ease the burden faced by the pensioners.
They said the decentralization would help reduce risk of travelling long distances to their respective state for the exercise maintaining however that, the exercise has been carried out in a more conducive manner compared to previous exercises.
Earlier, the head of Corporate Communications of the Directorate, Steve Omanufeme, said that, the exercise was on-going in the South-South and South East zones adding that it was aimed at harmonising the pension scheme for effective management.
