PTAD: Harmonisation Reforms Will Advance Pension Equity

Ebere Nwoji

The Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), has said that implementation of the Defined Benefit Scheme Pension Harmonisation was a reform meant to advance and enhance pension payment equity in the country. 

The Executive Secretary/CEO, Pension Transitional Arrangement Directorate (PTAD), Tolulope Abiodun Odunaiya, said the initiative was a landmark reform designed to restore fairness, improve retirees’ welfare and strengthen confidence in the administration of the country’s legacy pension system.

Odunaiya said the harmonisation exercise, approved under the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, marked one of the most significant policy interventions in the DBS since PTAD was established in 2013 to take over the management of pensions under the old federal pension arrangement.

Unlike periodic pension increases that merely raise existing benefits by a percentage, she said that pension harmonisation would go further by re-computing pensions using the latest approved salary structures that existed before the closure of the Defined Benefit Scheme (DBS).

The objective, he noted, was to ensure that retirees who held similar positions and rendered comparable years of service received equitable pension benefits regardless of their retirement dates.

The initiative came against the backdrop of years of agitation by pensioners over historical disparities in pension computation. PTAD’s harmonisation programme, she said, sought to resolve that challenge by restoring parity within the system.