Five categories of claimants received more than $4bn in payments from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) based on pension claims made during 2006, according to information released by the Scheme recently. The payments covered claims made by old age pensioners, invalids, survivors and disabled persons and claims in the death benefits category.
During last year old age pensioners received payments totalling more than $3bn while survivors received pension payments totalling more than $692m. Pension payments to invalids totaled more than $198m while similar payments to disabled persons totaled more than $64m. Survivors of deceased persons received more than $30m in pension payments during last year.
Meanwhile, figures released by the NIS indicate that the Scheme approved a total of 3,661 pension claims and 1,785 grants to various categories of applicants in 2006.
Pension claims and grants made by the NIS in 2006 covered old age, invalidity, disability, survivors, disablement, death and funerals. The highest number of pension and grant approvals – 2,451 and 928, respectively were made to old age claimants while survivors benefited from 961 approved pension claims and 102 approved grant claims. A total of 188 pension claims and 22 grants were approved on the basis of invalidity applications while 50 pension claims and 34 grants were approved based on disablement applications.
Payment claims to the NIS were also disallowed in several categories including the old age category where 143 pension claims and 125 grant claims were disallowed. 131 survivor claims for pensions and 54 claims for grants were also disallowed.
Meanwhile the end of 2006 found the NIS with 7,666 unprocessed claims including 3,533 pension claims and 1,861 survivor claims. During last year the NIS received a total of 6,043 claims for various categories of pensions and grants while a total of 1,623 claims were brought forward from 2005.
During last year the Scheme processed a total of 4,049 pension claims and 2,074 grant claims.
