THE National Pension Commission (PenCom) carries out an annual pre-retirement verification and enrolment of employees of federal government treasury funded Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). The exercise is for employees who have about a year to attaining the statutory age of retirement or length of service. The affected employees gather at designated Centres across the country for physical verification and enrolment. Medically unfit employees were exempted from the physical enrolment.
Pension Desk Officers of medically unfit employees were always advised to go to verification centres with a letter from a suitably qualified physician or medical board certifying that the employee is no longer physically or mentally capable of carrying out the functions of his/her office in addition with originals of other documents for sighting while photocopies of same were submitted for verification. These were the same documents that employees who went for physical verification and enrolment, were required to take along.
The documents are: (a) letter of first appointment; (b) evidence of transfer of service and acceptance (where applicable); (c) birth certificate or declaration of age; (d) letter/evidence of promotion to the grade level as at June 2004; (e) letter/evidence of ALL promotions obtained from 2004 to date; (f) letter of introduction from the MDA; (g) staff identity card; (h) letter/evidence of retirement (applicable to those who have retired, mandatorily/voluntarily/disengaged /termination and yet to enrol with the Commission); (i) letter of indemnity from the MDA stating non-payment of retirement; benefits (applicable to those who retired/disengaged before 2009; and (j) evidence of registration with a Pension Fund Administrator indicating: Retirement Savings Account Personal Identification Number (PIN).
The Commission was however unable to conduct physical annual pre-retirement verification and enrolment exercise in 2020 due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The physical verification and enrolment of pre-retirement employees is borrowed from the Defined Benefits Scheme (DBS), where senior citizens who have become frail, as a result of age or sickness, or a combination of both were dehumanised in the name of verification of pensioners. These senior citizens were made to go to verification centres for verification to ascertain that they were still alive. There were reports and pictures in the media of some of them being carried on the backs of their relatives to or dying on verification lines.
It is in order to put a stop to this archaic dehumanisation process of verification and enrolment of pre-retirement employees and other reasons that PenCom developed an online application which will automate the annual pre-retirement verification and enrolment exercise. The application has the capabilities to register, verify and enrol prospective retirees of treasury-funded federal government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Accordingly, the online enrolment application would be hosted on PenCom website: www.pencom.gov.ng.
As a prelude to the formal deployment of the online enrolment application, PenCom has commenced a pilot run of the exercise that started from 2nd August and will last till 20th August 2021 with selected MDAs in the six geopolitical zones and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in order to test-run the application with real-time data. The application would GO-LIVE after the conclusion of the pilot run on a date to be announced by PenCom in due course.
Affected retirees/prospective retirees are required to undergo the data recapturing exercise with their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) as this is a pre-requisite for the online enrolment. This entails updating their personal details and providing their National Identification Numbers (NIN). However, retirees/prospective retirees who have already undergone the data recapture exercise with their PFAs are not required to repeat the exercise.
A two-day training workshop was held on Tuesday 15th June and Wednesday 16th June 2021 for Pension Desk Officers of MDAs. The aim of the training was to expose Pension Desk Officers to the newly developed online enrolment application procedures to enable them to be able to guide the retirees on how to complete and ensure accuracy in the information to be submitted online.
The perfection of the workings of the enrolment application by PenCom and the mastering of its use by Pension Desk Officers will go a long way towards putting a stop to the annual physical pre-retirement verification and enrolment at designated centres with its attendant inconvenience to the employees and financial cost to PenCom.
