Image credited to hrinsider.ca
With the call in Europe for an extension of the
retirement age due to failure of the
pension scheme in those areas as a result of the global financial crises, and a
scam targeting retirees, this shows that the pension environment has been a
subject of issues and challenges occasioned by misappropriation of fund,
failure of the retirees to access their benefit as at when due.
These has resulted in death of these retirees, lack
of interest in adhering to the scheme and above government nonchalant attitude
in ensuring that the perpetrators are brought to book, the police pension scam
is still fresh in our minds.
But with the enactment of the pension reform act
2004 and the amended pension reform act 2014, there seems not only an
improvement in the scheme but the average awareness that there is a whole lot
of improvement in the management of the scheme, as the pensions hit 4.6
trillion Naira.
But notwithstanding the improved pension’s assets,
there are still imminent challenges and issues, these issues can be categorized
in to four, and they are follows:
A The challenges of the employee
B The challenges of the employer
C The challenges of the PFAS.
D The challenges of the Regulator
E The challenges of the custodian
A The challenges of the employees: The employee is
one the key player in the new pension scheme, if not the most strategic player
in the scheme. The mistakes of the employee has adversely affected the working
of the scheme, the major challenges on
the of the employees are as follows:
A Lack of Adequate knowledge about the workings of
the scheme,
B Negative perceptions towards the scheme
C Nigeria workers not imagined a future without a
legitimate retirement plan
D untimely attendance of verification and enrolment
exercises.
E untimely presentation of documents for nominal
roll, IPPIS etc
F Non updating of registration details for possible
changes
G late submission of completed retirement forms
H Submission of incomplete documents
I Inability to send retirement notifications 6
months to retirement
J Not signing of Lump sum agreement
K Unmatched names
L Age discrepancies
Challenges
of the employer:
The challenges of the employers include the
following:
Failure of employer to remit contributions
Splitting employee’s contribution
Deducting incomplete contributions as it regards to
both employee and employers contribution.
Failures of employers to contact employees six
months before retirement
Tactically avoiding accrued pension rights
No information on computation of accrued pension
rights of employees
Computation and payment of accrued pension rights.
Challenges
of PFAs
Poor service delivery
Delay in access benefit payment
Wrong capture of biometrics
Wrong pen
Double pen, and at times triple pen
Delay in issuing pen
No early response to business correspondence
Low quality investment instruments
Volatile
economic indices, e.g. inflation rate.
Challenges
of regulator
No
enough offices throughout the federation
Inability
to thoroughly bring the informal sector in the scheme
No
increase of pension for the past 10 ten years
Shortages
of fund
Heavy
tax on AVC
Challenges
of custodian
Inability
to capture the schedules
Not
able to get the employer after payment issues
Not
carrying the PFAS
Challenges
of Life annuity
No Six
months to retirement notification to the PFA
Information
gap on annuity
Wrong
information to the annuitants
Not giving
the annuitant correct information
Odunze Reginald C is the Lead Consultant, Chareg
Consulting.
You can follow our anchor at twitter @regydunze,
and our Face book @reginald odunze.com , You can also check us at
pensionsbenefit.com
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