Funds dry up, staff short: TERBB pension crisis deepens

Tens of thousands of retired non-government teachers and employees are waiting on pension payments they may not receive any time soon – caught between an underfunded board, an unreliable digital system, and a staff of fewer than twenty people managing over eighty thousand pending cases.

The Non-Government Teacher Employee Retirement Benefit Board (TERBB) is struggling to process applications from MPO-listed teachers and employees under the weight of compounding problems: a chronic shortage of funds, a backlog that has grown faster than it can be cleared, and a digital infrastructure that officials themselves acknowledge is not fully fit for purpose.

Since 2018, retirement payments have been processed through the government’s iBAS++ digital platform, replacing the previous manual method. 

The transition, however, has created as many problems as it resolved. 

Many teachers – unfamiliar with the system – submitted their initial applications through local computer shops, with the result that shop owners’ mobile numbers were entered into the system instead of their own.

Since iBAS++ requires an exact match between a national identity card, date of birth, and the NID-registered mobile number to release payments, those mismatches have effectively frozen thousands of cases.
Further complications abound. Incorrect birth years in national ID records mean some retired teachers still appear as active in government systems. 

Deceased applicants, name spelling errors, and cases where nominees have not been updated on the system have added to the jam. 

The platform also goes down periodically, and offers no direct means of contacting applicants – making verification a slow, manual effort that the board’s skeleton staff can barely sustain. The scale of the crisis is stark. 

As of the end of June 2025, 64,775 applications were pending, requiring approximately Tk7,773 crore for settlement. A further 15,545 applications – worth nearly Tk1,865 crore – were added during the current fiscal year, bringing the total to 80,320 cases and a required outlay of around Tk9,638 crore.

Against this, the board has funds sufficient only to cover applications submitted between January and June 2022. Its monthly deficit stands at roughly Tk35 crore, with the annual shortfall reaching approximately Tk420 crore. 

Sources say the board pays out nearly ten times more in retirement benefits than it receives through the government’s share of MPO contributions from retired teachers and employees.
Responsibility for processing this volume falls on just 18 staff members – 11 government officers and 8 daily-wage employees.

For those waiting, the uncertainty is compounding the hardship. One applicant who filed for retirement benefits in September last year has been unable to obtain any confirmation of receipt. 

“I contacted the call centre several times but did not get any response,” he told this correspondent. 

“Other officials frequently say there is a problem with the website. Now I am confused about my application, as any issue may delay the processing further.”

Nahida Chowdhury, deputy director of TERBB, acknowledged the difficulties plainly. “We are working, but there are some issues: technical and manpower shortage,” she said, recommending that the government immediately launch a special crash programme to address the backlog, alongside urgent recruitment of IT experts and staff, and decentralisation of the processing system.

Without intervention, the board’s own projections suggest that even by the end of the current fiscal year, nearly 59,820 applications worth Tk7,176 crore will remain unresolved – and the queue will keep growing.

The reporter can be reached at: [email protected]