7 000 miss from pensions payroll

About 7 000 pensioners cannot access their monthly pension benefits after their names were allegedly deleted from the pensions payroll effective September 2017.

However, Ministry of Finance, Economic Planning and Development has blamed the situation on the pensioners themselves for failing to comply with the ministry’s call for a head count exercise last December.

The ministry’s spokesperson Davis Sado said in an interview that after the December 2016 head count, Treasury discovered that 7 000 pensioners did not take part.

He said the ministry extended the exercise to July 2017 hoping that the remaining people would conduct the exercise.

Some of the affected pensioners said they were shocked to find nothing in their bank accounts as expected on monthly basis.

“Some of us nearly fainted when we found nothing in the account on the dates we normally get our pension money. When we inquired, we were told that our names had been deleted,” said Rodrick Makandanje from Lilongwe.

He said he retired in 2004 as a clinical officer and has since been receiving his pension without problems until  September this year.

Sado said from the time the affected people realised that they have not been paid their September 2017 pension; there have been queues at Treasury to conduct the exercise.

In a press statement which the ministry has released, the affected pensioners are expected to produce a certificate of retirement from a controlling officer, pension warrant, final gratuity payment documents, a recognised identity card and bank account details.