Communication exchanges between pensioners living in the diaspora show that more than 350 have not been receiving their pensions. Each of them is owed more than $14,000 in arrears, translating to over $5 million.
When those that have migrated to South Africa are added, the figure doubles to more than $10 million, according to one senior citizen living in the UK. “This amounts to a withholding fraud of around $10 million worth of stolen global diasporan pensioners’ funds,†said a Zimbabwean based in the UK. This figure does not take into account those that migrated to countries other than the UK and South Africa.
The pensioners left the country for various reasons, which included fleeing the violent land “reform†programme, migrating out of fear they could be harmed or following those who took care of them in old age.
They have urged western aid providers to reconsider their assistance to Zimbabwe in the wake of the state’s failure to pay the pensions.
“It seems clear now that Zimbabwe’s western aid in general, and UK aid in particular, needs to be looked at afresh and with honesty. Not to do so effectively continues to reward criminal behaviour, thus making the overseas aid agencies accomplices in the fraud. It is quite clear that the Zimbabwe pensions administrative structure is simply not competent to either honestly or effectively deliver on its lawful mandate,†said another pensioner.
Massive fraud
The Zimbabwean recently revealed massive fraud at the Pension Office where officers, particularly from the army, were conniving with bank officials to steal late pensioners’ money.
A pensions office notice dated September 14 requires pensioners to fill in a life certificate for the department to ascertain if they were still alive. This is the third such request in the last 10 years and, according to the pensioners, most of them have not been paid despite filling the forms.
All civil service pensioners must register by end of October or their pensions would be forfeited. They feared that the pension office did not want to pay them out by introducing too many demands.
“To introduce a now third exercise of proving we are alive is both scandalous and cruel. The last one was not without considerable cost and effort. To ask the still unpaid pensioners abroad to jump through the same hoop again is simply unacceptable,†said one pensioner.
President Robert Mugabe recently appointed a pensions commission headed by retired judge George Smith.
“You will only be able to get the information after the ongoing meeting of commissioners,†said Smith. Local pensioners have also been crying foul over a long time, complaining that they are getting too little or no money at all.
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