The Cross River State Government through the Office of the State Auditor General has introduced a platform that will ensure pensioners did not pass through the stressful and cumbersome process in verifying their pension status.
The State Auditor- General, Comrade John Mpama Odey, disclosed this to newsmen in Calabar while speaking on Government’s plans to sanitise the pensions’ payroll by eradicating ghost names and other fraudulent practices that had bedevilled the system in the past
Tagged ‘AM ALIVE’, this platform according to him will not only eliminate travelling long distances for verification purpose and time wastage on endless queues, but will also give the Pensioner the dignity of being the senior citizens which they are.
The State Auditor General explained that ‘AM ALIVE’ platform is simply “verifying the Pensioner’s BVN in order to authenticate his or her identity,” explaining further that the process only requires that the Pensioner goes to the bank where his or her pension is paid within three months and demand to do the ‘AM ALIVE’ BVN verification.
Thereafter the thumb print is then captured and sent to a Central Server after which a printout is issued to the Pensioner who then takes it to the Sub-Treasury Office.
He lamented that in the past, “Pension verification was based on the submission of documents and it was discovered that those documents could just be in the hands of an impersonator,” resulting in government paying Pensions to the wrong persons maintaining that the ‘AM ALIVE’ programme saves the pensioner from stress and helps the “Government to determine who actually is alive and should receive Pensions.”
In another development, Organised Labour in Cross River State has picketed the office of the Accountant General of the state over non-remittance of deductions made by them.
NLC was said to have ignored the Chief of Staff to Governor Ben Ayade, Mr Martins Orim, who had pleaded with protesters to exercise restraint
The union continued to block the Accountant General’s office over the deductions from workers’ salaries which labour claimed was not being remitted to the bank for those who borrowed from different banks, just as the union was also angry over the refusal of the accountant general to remit money deducted for housing purposes to mortgage banks.
However, the Accountant General, Mr Joseph Adie had met with labour and promised to look into their case, promising that something would be done about it before the end of the day.
Meanwhile, the State Chairman, NLC, Mr Ben Ukpebi, said the union decided to hear from the accountant general but he did not solve the situation as promised.
“We arrived here today only to discover that the AG did not do anything. So we are picketing his office and we will not listen to anybody until they meet our demands,” Ukpebi said.
But as they gathered in front of the gate, the Governor’s Chief of Staff Martins Orim, arrived to address them but the union shunned him and insisted on speaking with the governor.
It was gathered that the office of the accountant general has been deducting money from workers’ salaries for those who got loans from the various banks, but never remitted funds to the affected banks.

By: Friday Nwagbara, Calabar