Retired civil servants who did not register for the National ID are likely to be deleted from the government payroll according to Eliab Tebainembazi, the Team Leader for the census and biometric validation of pensioners in- charge of Acholi sub region.
Tebainembabazi revealed that only those with National ID, voter’s relocation slip and National ID registration form issued during registration will be registered.
Addressing the media at Gulu District Headquarters in Gulu town on Wednesday on the sidelines of the registration exercise, Mr Tebainembabazi said the major objective of the exercise is to clean up the pensioners’ payroll.
According to Tebainembabazi, get rid of the ‘ghost’ will save government billions of shillings paid to non-existence pensioners.
He said anyone who lacks what he termed as essential documents such as National ID will be forced to register before his or her biometrics details can be uploaded into the system.
Pensioners who will be affected are those whose have different names on the payroll and those on the national identification register database.
In December 2014, government kicked of the mass enrolment exercise for the national Identification registration exercise for its citizens. But several individuals have not received their IDs due to what officials attribute to technical problems.
The census and biometric validation of pensioners started in Agago district last week and has so far attracted over 750 pensioners in the eight districts of Acholi sub region and Kiryadongo district.
The pensioners’ clean-up of the pension payroll exercise will end on March 30, 2017.
The pension scheme has been rocked with thefts leaving genuine pensions to suffer with many of them dying without getting their pensions.
The Anti- corruption court in May last year convicted senior officials of the ministry of public service for the theft of 88 billion shillings meant for pensioners. The three were the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary Jimmy Lwamafa, former principal secretary Christopher Obey and Kiwanuka Kunsa, a former commissioner in-charge of pensions.
