During a meeting with the Senate Standing Committee on Finance, representatives from the Ministry of Finance claimed that the federal government failed to address the problem of “ghost pensioners.” As a result, the pension bill reached Rs. 609 billion as of Wednesday.
Approximately 949,000 of the 3.23 million pensioners in total are still receiving their benefits manually, according to the officials. Unexpectedly, nearly 6,600 are “ghost pensioners” in this statistic.
The Direct Credit System (DCS) has been adopted by more than 2.2 million pensioners, as stated by the government. They also revealed that 41% of military retirees and 90% of civil pensioners now have their pensions directly transferred into their respective bank accounts.
In addition, all pensions in Punjab, Sindh, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are being deposited into bank accounts, while 93% of pensioners in Balochistan have been transferred to the DCS.
Despite their best efforts, Finance Ministry officials admitted that it will still take a year to switch over all payouts to the DCS system.
