MANILA, Philippines — The Commission on Audit (COA) has called out the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) over the latter’s failure to remove 264 deceased pensioners from its payroll and alpha list of active pensioners six to 25 months after their deaths, thus resulting in P73.11 million in overpayment of pension benefits.

“Audit of benefit payments revealed that based on the payrolls of active pensioners provided by the AFP Finance Center (AFPFC), several pensioners who were already deceased in calendar years (CYs) 2021, 2022 and 2023 still received benefits,” the COA said in its 2023 annual audit report on AFP General Headquarters (GHQ).

“For periods ranging from six to 25 months after their deaths, deceased pensioners were still granted benefits amounting to P73,110,052.32, notwithstanding the efforts of the AFP Pension and Gratuity Management Center (AFPPGMC) in updating and accounting for pensioners to update the pensioners list,” the state audit body added.

The audit observation was ironic as the AFPPGMC, in its 2023 Annual Accomplishment Reports presented to the audit team, claimed that it was able to update 168,242 pensioners’ records, or 20.32 percent more than its target of 139,832.

“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 COA pointed out.

It explained that the inclusion of deceased pensioners in the payroll and alpha list of active pensioners indicates “lapses in the implementation of monitoring mechanisms” prescribed under its Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) 14 dated July 15, 2019, prescribing the guidelines in the administration and utilization of the AFP Pension Fund.

The audit record showed that for 2023, a total of P43.602 million in overpayment of pension benefits was incurred by the AFP due to the inclusion of the deceased pensioners.

For 2022 and 2021, a total of P29.508 million in overpayment of pension benefits was incurred.

The COA said among the possible causes of leakage was because some pensioners under the age of 70 passed away after their scheduled annual updating of records and their relatives “either intentionally or unintentionally” deferred informing the AFPPGMC of their deaths.

“Since updating is only required once a year, this led to the continuous receipt of benefits since the next update is required at least two months prior to the pensioner’s upcoming birthday,” the state audit body added.

Following this development, the AFP committed to implement the audit recommendations22bet, adding that in the fourth quarter of last year, its PGMC has created and operationalized a call center to validate the non-updating pensioners with the aim of minimizing the continuous deposit of pensions or overpayments and to also caters to the updating of records of all pensioners.

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