Mr Anyim Nyerere, the Commissioner of Technical at the National Pension Commission (PenCom), on Monday said that the commission had developed an online enrollment application to register, verify and enroll prospective retirees.
Nyerere disclosed this during the opening ceremony of Pension Desk Officers (PDOs) Workshop for Treasury Funds Ministries, Departments and Agencies, in Abuja.
He said that it was an established norm within PenCom to conduct physical annual retirement verification and enrollment exercise on the Federal Government employees of MDAs scheduled for retirement within the next fiscal year.
Nyerere said that the conduct of physical annual retirement verification and enrollment exercise was aimed at validating and determining the retirees’ accrued pension liabilities for budgetary allocation by the Federal Government.
He said that online verification became necessary in view of the challenges encountered as a result of COVID-19 and the need for safety measures.
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“PenCom regrets its inability to conduct this physical annual pre-retirement enrolment exercise due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The need to observe the necessary safety measures as directed by the government thus becomes inevitable.
“The PDOs and the public within the pension industry will appreciate the challenges in not conducting the physical pre-retirement enrolment exercise.
“Hence, the commission has developed an online enrollment application with the capabilities to register, verify and enroll prospective retirees and provide the guidance note accordingly which will help to compute the retirees’ retirement benefits.
“This application which will be hosted on the commission’s website, will enable prospective retirees log on to register with their details on the Retiree Registration Module (RRM),” he said.
He said the desire was to ensure that the exercise did not affect the validation and determination of the accrued pension liabilities of the would-be retirees for the government budgetary purposes.
He said that the workshop would help equip the PDOs with the requisite knowledge on how the retiree registration module operates for the smooth implementation of the online enrollment application.
He added that, “All necessary safeguards, modalities have equally been put in place for the exercise.
“We hope the PDOs would strictly comply with the provisions of the guidance notes on the enrollment for the conduct of the upcoming nationwide pre-retirement verification and enrolment exercise.” (NAN)