18 800 pensioners face loss of income

Published: 02 October 2017

Pensioners who have failed to register with the National Social Security Authority (NSSA)'s biometric system whose deadline was last Saturday, will not receive their monthly payouts beginning next month.

This comes as the authority has increased the pension allowances from $60 to $80 beginning next month.

NSSA set last Saturday as the deadline for all pensioners to be captured under the biometric system.

NSSA marketing and communications executive Mr Tendai Mutseyekwa said by last Friday 18 880 pensioners had not registered.

"As at 4pm on Friday, 148 849 pensioners had registered under the biometric system," he said. "The exercise, which began in November 2016, ended last Saturday.

Mr Mutseyekwa said the biometric registration would ensure that pension payouts were paid to deserving beneficiaries.

"It replaces life certificates that were being used," he said. "Biometric registration is only done once, unlike life certificates that had to be renewed annually.

We started the biometric registration exercise in November last year and employed various strategies to encourage pensioners to register under the new system.

"Among these were countrywide road shows that were conducted in collaboration with traditional leaders during the first quarter of 2017. Our teams were deployed to some of the remotest parts of Zimbabwe, as well as strategic centres, such as growth points, to ensure that everyone was accorded a fair chance to register."

Mr Mutseyekwa added: "We also took advantage of large gatherings such as church conferences, sports tournaments and Government functions to register people during the outreach. Our awareness programmes included adverts on radio and TV and publication of names of those who had not registered in The Herald and Chronicle of the 25th of September as a last minute reminder.

"All this was done to ensure that no pensioner would be left out."

New contributors will be allowed to register, said Mr Mutseyekwa.

Biometric registration involves capturing of one's unique physical attributes such as fingerprints, DNA, iris and retina pattern.

Some people had been withdrawing benefits for people who died long back.
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