Africa-Press – Namibia. THE Government Institutions Pension Fund (GIPF) yesterday launched a new biometric enrolment and verification system for its over 50 000 active beneficiaries.
This system will require that all qualifying annuitants are enrolled to have their biometrics data captured, particularly fingerprint and facial capturing, into an Automated Biometrics Identification System (Abis).
The GIPF was previously heavily reliant on fingerprint identification, and the new system has an added security feature of facial scanning, which has liveness detection.
“This is especially critical where we have members with disabilities in respect of their hands, or damage to fingers, which may be difficult to scan,” Evans Maswahu, the fund’s chairperson of the benefits and administration committee, said yesterday.
The fund had suspended the enrolment and verification process at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is now resuming it.
The new biometric enrolment system, which went live yesterday, will run until 28 February 2023, and verification will be done at all fully fledged GIPF offices nationwide.
GIPF satellite offices at Grootfontein, Opuwo and Nkurenkuru will not be enrolling during this initial phase, but will be served by mobile teams of which the schedules are yet to be announced.
“The GIPF thus implores all qualifying annuitants to enrol. Kindly note that the term ‘qualifying’ refers to all annuitants receiving an income from the GIPF, and not to be mistaken with those receiving any government grants.
“Qualifying annuitants include all retired members, be it those on early or normal retirement, or spouses and children of deceased members of the GIPF,” Maswahu said.
He said this verification is limited to those in receipt of a monthly income from the GIPF, and communication of the documents to be brought at verification will be made public in due course.
“I reiterate that the fund places great emphasis on sustainability, and therefore needs to ensure benefits are only paid out to the correct beneficiaries, thus annuitants are encouraged to enrol to make sure their benefits continue to be paid timeously,” said Maswahu.
The chairperson urged the fund’s members to be vigilant of people who may attempt to mislead or defraud them during the process through false information.
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