7K deceased still collected P615M pension from AFP

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OVER nine years from 2014 to 2023, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) still coughed up P615.64 million in pension payments to deceased pensioners, the Commission on Audit revealed.

Based on the 2023 audit report of the General Headquarters-AFP released on December 1, 2024, the payouts considered by the COA as “excess payments” involved 7,210 pensioners.

The COA noted that the job of maintaining and updating the AFP pensioners’ database falls on the AFP Pension and Gratuity Management Center (AFPPGMC).

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“The long-outstanding and uncollected accounts of AFPPGMC aged one to nine years as of December 31, 2023 consists of overpayments of pension benefits to deceased pensioners totaling P615,641,568.54,” auditors said.

While the AFPPGMC clarified that it has successfully updated 168,242 pensioners’ records during the audit year, thereby exceeding its target of 139,832 accounts by 20.32 percent, the audit team said the excess payments “deprives the government of beneficial use of funds and affects the fairness of the presentation of the financial statements.”

Verification by the COA of the pension payments released in 2021 revealed at least five deceased pensioners continued receiving pension for 14 to 25 months after they passed away.

For payments made in 2022, there were 193 pensioners who collected P55.706 million in pension payments six to 15 months after their recorded deaths.

For 2023, auditors traced 66 deceased pensioners’ accounts that continued getting paid six to nine months after their demise with a total payout of P13.87 million.

Auditors recognized that other than the challenges in regularly updating the status of living pensioners, relatives of the former AFP personnel are also part of the issue.

“Among the causes of leakage costs is because some pensioners under the age of 70 passed away after their annual updating schedule and relatives either intentionally or unintentionally, deferred informing the AFPPGMC,” the COA noted.

According to existing policies, updating a pensioner’s account is only done once a year, usually two months before the account holder’s birthday.

“Ideally, once the principal pensioner dies and the pension benefit is transferred to the qualified beneficiary, the principal should be deleted immediately from the pensioners’ list to reflect the accurate number of principals and beneficiaries,” the audit team pointed out.

Likewise, the AFPPGMC has failed to enforce the deletion of pensioners’ accounts after updating their status for three months after being tagged.

While acknowledging that there is no error-free system of monitoring and updating the pensioners’ status, the COA recommended that the AFPPGMC conduct frequent follow-up validations of non-updating pensioners to reduce the number of deposits of pension payments for the accounts of deceased members.

It stressed that efforts should be made to recover the payouts to accounts if the withdrawals were determined to have been made after the pensioner’s death.

As of May 2, 2024, the AFPPGMC informed the COA that verification of bank statements from the Land Bank of the Philippines involving 264 accounts was already ongoing and recovery procedures would be initiated if they are proven to be overpayments. 

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