Burkina Faso/Autonomous pension fund for civil servants: Banfora now has its own agency
The Caisse autonome de retraite des fonctionnaires (CARFO) opened its Banfora branch and installed the branch manager on Thursday April 3, 2025. The occasion was its open day in Banfora, in the Cascades region. Yiguya Carène Stella Eléonore Bado, the new branch manager, will be responsible for managing CARFO benefits and meeting the information needs of insured members.
Long represented by the Treasury department in Banfora, the Caisse Autonome de Retraite des Fonctionnaires (CARFO), to be closer to its policyholders, has installed its Banfora branch manager. Her installation took place during the launch of CARFO's Banfora Open Day activities. This new branch brings to seven the number of CARFO branches open from 2024 to date.
According to Harold Tiao, CARFO's Regional Director for the Hauts-Bassins region, since 2024 CARFO's general management, with the agreement of the Board of Directors, has been committed to deconcentrating its services in order to bring CARFO closer to its policyholders. The opening of this branch in Banfora is part of this process. To date, the institution is represented in ten regions of Burkina Faso, compared with three in 2023. With the opening of the new branch, policyholders in the Cascades region now have a local contact.
The newly-installed branch manager is responsible for receiving policyholders, retirees and active agents, listening to them, providing them with information and, if necessary, receiving their files for the management of CARFO benefits in the Cascades region. For her part, the new branch manager, Yiguya Carène Stella Eléonore Bado, praised her superiors for choosing her. She pledged to work with dedication and rigor to satisfy policyholders in the Cascades region. She affirmed that her priorities will be to raise awareness among policyholders and benefit recipients, so that they know that CARFO is now in Banfora.
The seventh of its kind after those held in Tenkodogo, Dédougou, Gaoua, Ouahigouya, Fada N'Gourma and Manga, this CARFO open day is also an opportunity to meet and exchange views with policyholders. That's why CARFO's General Manager Hyacinthe Tamalgo stressed the importance of this initiative, which, he said, aims to reinforce transparency and proximity with policyholders. The ceremony was presided over by the Governor of the Cascades region, Badabouè Florent Bazié. In his speech, he said that the opening of the new branch in Banfora was part of the drive to ensure greater visibility for CARFO's activities.
In view of its importance in the region, the governor reaffirmed his readiness, and that of all the region's administrative authorities, to support CARFO. He also congratulated CARFO on this open day, which will ultimately enable public servants, as well as the entire population of the region, to benefit from the CARFO's services.and all the people of the region to better understand the social security scheme managed by CARFO. "We are delighted to welcome the branch manager and promise to support her in implementing her activities in the region. We invite the population to take an interest in CARFO's activities, because we have the impression that it's for retired people, whereas CARFO also looks after those who are still working. So let's prepare our places for tomorrow, by actively participating in CARFO's activities", he urged.
In addition to the installation of the new branch manager, several other activities were on the agenda for this open day. These included the organization of a public conference on CARFO's services, an aerobics session followed by a friendly match between retirees and civil servants, a TV show and an exhibition.s and civil servants, a radio show and game show, as well as booths staffed by representatives of the various benefits branches to listen to visitors.
Introducing CARFO
At the ceremony to launch the Open Day activities, CARFO's General Manager Hyacinthe Tamalgo took the opportunity to give a brief presentation of the company and its activities.opportunity to give a brief overview of CARFO's performance, from its inception to the present day. According to him, CARFO was created in 1986 as a public industrial and commercial establishment. It effectively began operations in 1989, before being transformed into a public social welfare institution in 2006.
Since it began operations in 1989, CARFO has made the continuous improvement of its services to policyholders its main objective. As a logical consequence, processing times have been considerably reduced, from more than two or even three months, to one day for pension claims and three days for reversionary claims.
"It should be noted that the standard for processing files defined by the Inter-African Social Welfare Conference (CIPRES), the guarantor of good management practices for social welfare organizations in French-speaking Africa, is 45 days. This performance testifies to the importance that successive CARFO managers have always attached, over the years, to initiatives in tune with society and the changing needs of policyholders", he said.
These initiatives include the deconcentration of CARFO's services to be closer to policyholders, teledeclaration, which enables victims of work-related accidents to declare their accident wherever they are, the development and implementation of the IT master plan, the digitization of CARFO's services, and the introduction of a new, more user-friendly system.ma, the digitization of pension payments, enabling retirees to receive their pensions by mobile money, the introduction of a quality management and business continuity system, CARFO's ISO 9001 version 2015 certification, and the introduction of a biometric identification system.
"All these actions have enabled us to achieve laudable results, thanks not only to the leadership of successive directors at the head of CARFO, but also and above all to the determination and commitment of its staff," acknowledged Hyacinthe Tamalgo.
Source: lefaso.net/
