Pension Census on Course

Thousands of pensioners have turned up to participate in the ongoing nationwide census for pensioners an official from Ministry of Public Service has said.

Robert Lwasa, the Senior Systems Analyst who also doubles as the activity publicist said the turn up is overwhelming so far, though the activity is on course at different District Headquarters countrywide.  The exercise which kicked off on February 20, 2017 at different district headquarters and it is scheduled to run up to March 30, 2017.

The purpose of the exercise is to clean the Pensions payroll. “We will capture the biometric details of all pensioners and the only requisite for validation is a national identification. Upon collection of the pensioners’ biometric data, it will be reconciled with the National ID database and where there will be miss-matches, the pension record will be suspended from the payroll” Lwasa said. He added that, “The pensioners do not have to come to the Ministry of Public Service as they will be validated at the nearest District Headquarters relative to their places of residence”. He reiterated that the exercise is free of charge and no one is required to make any payment.

During a visit to Kayunga District Headquarters where a validation Pensioners in Kayunga was being held on 27th February 2017, the team leader Simon Bwire, said that the exercise was going on as planned and that the turn up was good. He explained that those that would not turn up for the exercise would be regarded as ghost pensioners and would in turn be deleted from the pension payroll. Simon reassured those that cannot genuinely make it to the Validation Centre that arrangements would be made to reach out to them. He said, “We know there are special cases that cannot come here, we will try to look for them”.

The chairperson of Kayunga Pensioners Association, Mr. Fredrick Kakooza welcomed the initiative but said the Ministry should strive to register those that cannot make it to the District Headquarters. “I know of people who are bedridden, but I hope officials will be able to visit them in their homes, but we are grateful to the Ministry,” the former Gombolola chief said.

This exercise continues to be rolled out in other Districts as per the planned schedule and is expected to go on until 30th March 2017. By Friday 10th March, 21,878 pensioners had been validated against a total of 70,085 pensioners. We encourage all those that are yet to be validated to present themselves to the Validation Centres at the District Head Quarters nearest to their places of residence.

As regards the Pensioners that are resident in Kampala and have not accessed any of the District Headquarters for validation, the exercise is expected to start on Monday 13th March, 2017 at the National Records and Archives Centre, next to the Ministry of Health Headquarters. This exercise is targeting all pensioners that were formerly in the Traditional Service, Teaching Service and the Army and all are encouraged to participate in the exercise to avoid disruption of the pension payments upon implementation of the findings at the end of the exercise. Validation continues at various District head Quarters as per the planned schedule.

SCHEDULE FOR COUNTRYWIDE CENSUS AND BIOMETRIC VALIDATION EXERCISE

FOR WEEK 3 (13^TH MARCH – 18^TH MARCH 2017)