Jubilation as NITEL/MTel Pensioners Begin Verification

January 19, 2018
NITEL MTel retirees

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Verification of retirees of former federal government owned telecoms outfit, Nigerian Telecommunication (NITEL) and its mobile subsidiary, MTel, has kicked off. This has sparked excitement among former employees of the company.

The exercise, which is in two phases, commenced on Monday, January 15, 2018 and would be concluded on Saturday, January 27, 2018 (next week).

The verification is being carried out across the six geo-political zones of the country by the Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) under the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS).

Over 20,000 retirees of NITEL/MTel are expected to be verified by the agency during the exercise.

For the first phase, the exercise is taking place at four centres; between January 15 and 27 at two centres in Lagos; between January 15 and 23 at a centre in Enugu, and between January 15 and 20 at a centre in Port Harcourt.

For the second phase, retirees of the firms will go to three centres; from February 5 -13 at the Abuja centre, from February 5- 13 at the Kano centre, and from February 5 – 8 at the Gombe centre.

Addressing newsmen at the Enugu centre, Executive Secretary of PTAD, Mrs Sharon Ikeazor, explained that the verification exercise was to off-set pension liabilities owed the former workers by federal government.

According to her, PTAD will pay entitlements of the retirees as soon as the budget is passed by the National Assembly because the money needed to make this a reality has been included in the 2018 budget.

“After the verification we are going to do what we call the computation, the computation of their entitlements; after computation we have federal auditors who have to clear the payments before we actually make payment to them.

“We have actually told them clearly that payment is not automatic, it will take us at least four, five months to get this payment done because NITEL is not the only one under PTAD; they are part of the privatised agencies that we are handling. Recall that we did Delta Steel and we did New Nigeria Newspapers, NICON Insurance and Nigeria Reinsurance among others.

“The money that will be paid to the pensioners will be appropriated in the budget, so we are waiting for the 2018 budget, all our funding liabilities are included into the budget so that’s why we are asking the National Assembly to speed up the passage of the budget.

“To us, these are not numbers, these are human beings, these are lives we are talking about and they must get their entitlements,” she said.

At one of the Lagos centres in Alausa, Ikeja, which Business Post visited on Wednesday, pensioners of the company were seen doing their data capturing.

Though they complained that the process was cumbersome, the joy of knowing that they would be paid soon by the government overrides the pains.

“The process is a bit difficult for us, but the fact that we are in this crucial stage is enough to make us happy,” one of the pensioners told us.

As on Wednesday when our correspondent visited the centre, we learned that tallies had been given to the retirees since Monday and were told to return on Wednesday to be captured.

This, Business Post gathered, caught most of the former workers of NITEL/MTel unawares and left those living outside Lagos stranded in the metropolis.

Efforts to speak with officials of PTAD at the centre on why this system was adopted did not yield any meaningful result as we were directed to the agency’s head office in Abuja.

Modupe Gbadeyanka

Modupe Gbadeyanka is a fast-rising journalist with Business Post Nigeria. Her passion for journalism is amazing. She is willing to learn more with a view to becoming one of the best pen-pushers in Nigeria. Her role models are the duo of CNN's Richard Quest and Christiane Amanpour.

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