By Bridget Ikyado /Angela Atabo
Abuja – Mr Dasuki Arabi, the Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR) says knotty issues around the payment of pensions and other entitlements of retirees will soon be resolved and be a thing of the past.
Arabi made this known on Wednesday in Abuja when he received officials of the National Association of Retired Para Military Officers, led by its President, Mr Musa Kayode.
According to him, reforms were initiated to change the system and adopt innovations to ensure that citizens get value out of the public service
“As the agency responsible for reforms and as a member of the team responsible for payment of disengaged officers, we have been working tirelessly to ensure that anybody affected is paid his benefits.
“It is just not fair that somebody worked for 20 to 25 years and was asked to go, yet you refused to pay his benefit,” he said.
Arabi said that the delays in the payment of pensioners arose due to failure to stick to processes and procedures.
“We have been trying as much as we can not only to address this problem but to close this door finally because we cannot be handling this thing for years, we must have a timeline to conclude this,’’ he added.
Arabi said government would ensure that payment of retirees benefits was done correctly.
“Unfortunately, some of them are deceased, some of their next of kin are gone, but it is their entitlement and we must pay them.
“We had written to the Accountant-General of the Federation and other agencies for the same thing, for us to have a round table discussion.
“We will also invite you and the media to see what the issues are and come up with the solutions.
“We have written another letter to the accountant-general and we are hoping to hear from him soon. BPSR is not keeping money nor responsible for payment, we are only responsible for clearing staff,” Arabi said.
Earlier, Kayode expressed happiness over the bureau’s readiness to assist in handling discrepancies in retirees entitlements.
“We had a lot of our officers who were downsized, there were some problems during screening and other pre-retirement exercises.
“Our members want the issues resolved,” he said.
He said that some of the retirees were being short-changed, while there were also issues of miscalculation of their entitlements (NAN/vitalnewsngr.com)
