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Felex Share Senior Reporter
At least 18 800 pensioners who have failed to register with the National Social Security Authority’s (NSSA) biometric system will not receive their monthly payouts beginning next month if they eventually do not meet the deadline today.

This comes as the authority has increased the pension allowances from $60 to $80 beginning next month. NSSA set today as the deadline for all pensioners to be captured under the biometric system. NSSA marketing and communications executive Mr Tendai Mutseyekwa yesterday said 18 800 pensioners had failed to register and would be removed from the payroll if they do not show-up today.

“As at 4pm today (yesterday), 148 849 pensioners had registered under the biometric system. The current exercise, which began in November 2016, closes tomorrow (today), as communicated via various media platforms. At the time of compilation of these statistics, 18 880 pensioners, from a total of 167 729 pensioners on our payroll, were still to register. As has been consistently advised through the media, pensioners who fail to register by the cut-off date will have their payouts suspended from October. Payments will only be reinstated after they have registered under the biometric system,” he said.

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

“It replaces life certificates that were being used. 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,” he said.

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 September 25 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.

The 18 880 people yet to register include those who might not be aware, ghost pensioners and those who could have been double counted. The implementation of the biometric system is expected to reduce the pension wage bill, as well as improve the benefits of pensioners. 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. The increase in payouts to $80 came after realisation that the $60 being given was low, as some beneficiaries living outside cities and towns were exhausting it on bus fare and related travel expenses.