Corroborated: Audit confirms ghost pensioners exist

Senate committee’s chairman hints at sending the case to NAB or FIA

ISLAMABAD: A special audit report by the office of Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) has established the existence of ghost pensioners, who were receiving pensions from the public purse through National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), said a top auditor of the country on Tuesday.

The findings of an interim audit report that the office of the AGP presented to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance gave credence to claims made by the NBP’s top management that there were thousands of ghost pensioners in the country.

The Chairman of the Standing Committee, Senator Saleem Mandviwalla, hinted at sending the case of ghost pensioners against the NBP to either National Accountability Bureau (NAB) or Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Despite resistance offered by the NBP management in giving access to record, the audit teams have seen cases where pensions are disbursed to dead persons and payments of pensions on a single pension number to more than one person, said the Additional Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) Javaid Jehangir.



The auditors have also found a unique case where the NBP is disbursing pension to a retired officer of Basic Pay Scale (BPS) grade-23 – a grade which does not exist in the country’s civil service, Jehangir said. The maximum grade is 22.

“Variations, inaccuracies and errors have been observed while auditing the pensioners’ data of the NBP,” said the AAGP, adding that the NBP has not yet given full access to the record, which is hindering completion of the report. He said in the NBP’s Gulburg Lahore branch as many as 25 dead people were receiving pensions.

According to the auditors, there were 2.572 million total pensioners in the country and 1.27 million were receiving pensions from the NBP as of June this year. In 2012, the NBP disbursed pensions to 2.1 million pensioners.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th, 2015.