The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD) has advised pensioners to be wary of fraudsters who extort them under the guise of helping to process their benefits.

The Executive Secretary of PTAD, Dr. Chioma Ejikeme, gave the advice on Thursday in Jos at the ongoing verification exercise for pensioners from states in the North-Central.

Ejikeme said the directorate would never demand money from pensioners to process their benefits and warned them to ignore any call from such fraudsters.

“PTAD will never take money from any of you to process anything that has to do with your retirement benefits.

“The only communication between PTAD and you is alert. We compute your gratuities, monthly pension, and other benefits, and all you get is the alert.

“So, we want to advise you not to give anybody money in the name of helping you to process your benefits. That is fraudulent,” she said.

The executive secretary said that the exercise was aimed at ensuring that all eligible pensioners were adequately captured in the data base of the directorate.

She also said that the exercise would enable the directorate to entertain complaints from the pensioners.

“All we are doing here is to ensure that all eligible pensioners are properly captured in our database.

“We shall also entertain some of the complaints by the pensioners. Some of them complained of irregular payment, under payment, not captured in the data base and what have you.

“So, we will get all these information and ensure that they are addressed,” she said.

Ejikeme said the verification exercise would be the last to be conducted, as any other exercise that would follow would be tagged: “I am alive”.

“This will be the last time PTAD will hold verification exercise for pensioners.

“Anything that will follow after this is what we call ‘I Am Alive’. It is an exercise which will hold once or twice a year to know if the pensioners are still alive,” Ejikeme explained

Earlier, Mr. Samuel Adewale, the North-Central Chairman of the National Union of Pensioners (NUP), commended PTAD for the exercise, and described the process as less cumbersome for his members.

“We have been on the ground since the exercise began and from what we have seen, it is in order.

“The process is less cumbersome for our members and we have not experienced any ugly situation all the while,” Adewale said.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the exercise is also ongoing simultaneously in Kwara, Niger and Kogi. (NAN)

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