Ombudsman’s directives: Depts asked to speed up pension disbursment

Federal ombudsman chairs meeting on pensioners’ issues

ISLAMABAD: The federal ombudsman has directed government departments to notify the retirement of an employee a year before his or her attaining the age of superannuation.

The ombudsman, Salman Faruqui, issued the directive while chairing a meeting for the resolution of pensioners’ issues at the Wafaqi Mohtasib Secretariat on Tuesday. The meeting was attended by representatives of different federal government departments including the Cabinet Division, Finance Division, Establishment, AGPR, FABS (CGA), Ministry of Information Technology and NITB, according to a press release.

Hafiz Ahsaan Ahmad Khokhar, senior adviser (law) and grievance commissioner for Overseas Pakistanis at the Wafaqi Mohtasib, said an alert e-mail will be issued by the AGPR to the respective welfare officer with a list of all required documents within 15 days.

“All federal government departments have been asked to complete all pension papers within six months from the date of receipt of the auto-generated e-mail,” he said, adding, “The AGPR will then complete the process of pension within 21 days from the receipt of final papers and the pension pay order (PPO) would be ready 15 days before the retirement of a government employee.”

He said the ombudsman directed all government departments to finalise pension cases of their employees before their retirement dates and introduce an e-pension system to make the process speedy.

Khokhar also sought progress reports of all departments on the previous instructions issued by the ombudsman secretariat to streamline the pension system.

The representative of the Establishment Division informed the ombudsman that the Ministry of IT and the FABS (Controller General of Accounts) have to prepare a ‘Dash Board’ for the use of federal government agencies to process pension payments.

“All ministries and departments will register their welfare offices responsible for processing pension cases with the AGPR and integrate their websites for which an e-mail module has already been prepared.”

Khokhar directed all the departments concerned, especially the Finance Division and the IT technology department, for early processing of the e-pension system.

The AGPR representative informed the ombudsman that profarma for pension cases have been simplified, adding “now it consists of only two pages -- for self-pension as well as for family pension.

“The system would automatically pick the data of those employees who are approaching their retirements from the website of the department concerned,” he said and directed the FABS to complete the alert system on departments’ websites within seven days.

“The Ministry of Housing will issue the necessary NOC within 15 days and the focal person of the Establishment Division and the Ministry of Housing & Works should check the progress of issuance of the NOC on the monthly basis.”

Published in The Express Tribune, November 9^th, 2016.