‘Proof of life’: More than 5,000 pensions suspended for lack of verification – Mozambique

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‘Proof of life’: More than 5,000 pensions suspended for lack of verification – Mozambique

2:40 CAT | 21 Jul 2016

Lusa (File photo)

The Mozambique National Social Security Institute (INSS) has suspended the payment of 5,285 pensions this year as a result of lack of satisfactory proof of life, Mozambican Minister of Labour Vitória Diogo has revealed.

“In order to ensure that pensions are paid only to legitimate beneficiaries, we have held our annual ‘proof of life’ test, and this year 5,285 pensioners did not come forward. The respective pensions have been suspended until the situation is regularised,” Diogo told parliament during question time.

A total of 47,000 people receive INSS pensions, she said, of which 8 percent are paid directly into a bank account, a measure encouraged to ensure security and save resources.

According to the minister, over 1.4 million employees spread over 700,000 companies are enrolled in the Mozambican social security system. Seven thousand self-employed workers have also registered since they became entitled to do so last year, a figure well exceeding the target of 4,350 that the government set itself in its Economic and Social Plan.

The government recently announced that it had suspended the payment of salaries to thousands of public servants for failing to satisfy the proof of life test, suspecting that many of them are so-called “ghost workers”, created by civil servants in treasury functions in order to subvert public funds.

Source: Lusa