THE National Pension Commission (PenCom) has jettisoned the erstwhile annual physical verification and enrolment of retirees and prospective retirees for online verification and enrolment.
PenCom has developed an online application which automates the Annual Pre-retirement Verification and Enrolment Exercise for retirees/prospective retirees of treasury-funded federal government Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). Accordingly, the online enrolment Application went live yesterday 1st September, 2021.
Prior to this, PenCom had been carrying out an annual physical pre-retirement verification and enrolment of employees of federal government treasury-funded MDAs. The exercise was for employees who had about a year to attaining the statutory age of retirement or length of service. The affected employees gathered at designated centres across the country for physical verification and enrolment. Medically unfit employees were exempted from the physical enrolment.
The automation is an innovation by the PenCom, aimed at putting a stop to the archaic dehumanisation process of the annual pre-retirement verification and enrolment of employees.
The following groups of employees are eligible for the online verification and enrolment exercise, which is, as stated earlier, already in progress: employees of federal government treasury-funded MDAs who retired between January and August 2021; employees of federal government treasury-funded MDAs who are due to retire from September 2021 and employees of federal government treasury-funded MDAs who missed the exercise in previous years.
The two enrolment options are as follows: (a) Self-assisted retirees/prospective retirees for the year 2021 are required to visit PenCom’s website www.pencom.gov.ng to initiate the online enrolment process.
This is done by registering and capturing their employment details as well as uploading scanned copies of the required documents before proceeding to their respective Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) for physical verification and enrolment.
The step-by-step procedure for the online enrolment would be hosted on the PenCom website; and retirees/prospective retirees who are unable to complete the online registration for any reason could approach the Pension Desk Officers (PDOs) of their respective MDAs or visit their PFAs for assistance.
As a prelude to the formal deployment of the online enrolment application, PenCom ran a pilot exercise, between 2nd August and 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. It is the success of the pilot exercise that gave PenCom the courage to go live with the online verification and enrolment.
Earlier, PenCom had organised a two-day training workshop, which held from Tuesday 15th June and Wednesday 16th June 2021 for PDOs of MDAs. The aim of the training was to expose the 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.
Affected employees and PDOs of MDAs are to note that verification and enrolment by all concerned must be completed with their respective PFAs by 29th October 2021. We congratulate PenCom for this innovation.
RELATED STORIES:
PenCom Says Online Enrolment for 2021 FG Retirees Begins Sept 1
PenCom’s Automation of Pre-Retirement Process for FG Retirees
