President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the implementation of the increase in pension to reflect the new minimum wage of 2019.
This was disclosed Friday in Abuja by the Executive Secretary of Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate, Dr Chioma Ejikeme.
In April 2019, Buhari signed the new minimum wage act into law. The law stipulates an increase from N18,500 to N30,000 as minimum wage in Nigeria.
Ejikeme said, “With this approval, PTAD is now empowered to start the upward adjustment of all pensioners’ benefits according to the approved template.
“The consequential adjustment of the new pension payment will start from the May 2021 payroll.
“The arrears will take effect from April 2019. PTAD will also commence payment of the arrears from May 2021,” she informed newsmen.
However, the PTAD scribe stressed that the agency “will not request for any gratification from anybody before the money will be paid into their account.”
“They should not give their account details to anybody. They should report any scammer or anyone requesting gratification before their benefits would be paid to PTAD.
“I repeat, do not give money to anybody. We have concluded arrangements to send SMS to all pensioners informing them of the payment and to caution them on the activities of pension scammers,” she further emphasised.
Ms Ejikeme assured that PTAD “will continue to strive to improve the quality of their lives,” appealing to “pension unions to continue to partner and cooperate with the directorate in our bid to provide better services to our senior citizens,” adding that, “The labour of our heroes past shall not be in vain.”
Adding that, “As a responsible agency of government saddled with the mandate of overseeing the payment of pension benefits to pensioners under the Defined Benefit Scheme and taking care of their welfare, we are encouraged to do more for our pensioners.”
