Mrs Olusola Obada, the Minister of State for Defence, says the ministry is making arrangements for military pensioners and their families to be included in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).
She made the announcement on Thursday in Abuja while briefing newsmen on the 2012 verification exercise for military pensioners to be conducted by the Military Pensions Board (MPB) and supervised by the Ministry of Defence.
Obada said the exercise would also be used to compile the data of retirees with a view to proposing to government the? inclusion of retirees and their families in the National Health Insurance Programme.
“The health insurance programme will be at no cost to the retirees.''
Obada said the 2012 verification exercise would be conducted for all military pensioners on the payroll of the MPB.
She said the exercise, carried out yearly, was aimed at determining those who might have died after the last verification exercise.
The minister said that specified dates had been designated for each rank for the conduct of the exercise to alleviate the suffering of the persioners.
She said arrangements had been concluded and necessary logistics put in place to ensure that the retirees had sufficient comfort and a stress-free verification exercise
“Snacks, water, canopies, chairs, standby generator and medical facilities and other welfare requirements will be provided during the exercise.
“The exercise will be a technical one. We are employing biometrics with three parameters of finger prints, iris scan and photo geometry to ensure credibility of our military pension data base.''
Obada explained that the combination of the three biometric parameters gives one of the best possible authentications to the data base as well as a means to cater for disabled retirees.
She urged all military retirees to cooperate with officials of the ministry to enable government to achieve the objective of the exercise.
Obada also appealed to the Nigerian Legion, especially the state chairmen, to be patriotic enough by submitting names of deceased pensioners and avoid any act that could jeopardise the exercise.
She warned that no act of indiscipline would be tolerated during the exercise.
Rear Adm. Mohammed Mshelia, the Chairmen of MPB, said the exercise would be conducted simultaneously in the 36 locations across the country.
He said the FCT and Nassarawa venues had been merged for administrative convenience.
“Pensioners are expected to attend the exercise at any of the designated centres nearest to them. They are therefore not expected to travel outside their states. (NAN)