Retirement income security
The information given out by the National Pensions Regulatory Authority that it will soon commence the transfer of funds in the temporary pension fund account at the Bank of Ghana to scheme managers is something which is very welcome although overdue.
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But as it is maintained, it is better late than never, and as the Akans say akyea na emmui sen abebuo nyinaa. To wit, it is bent but not broken holds great promise. However, it should not be another ploy to keep workers in suspense.
This is important because if the National Pensions Regulatory Authority, which promises workers that its motto is “ensuring retirement income security” does not deal with workers in transparent and open manner, and does not act in consonance with the rule of law, workers cannot hold their scheme managers to account. Where the regulator is seen to be blatantly or unwittingly breaching the law, it will be disenabled from being on the heels of the scheme managers when they default in regularly providing contributors with their statement of accounts.
In the recent past, there have been agitations about the security, whereabouts and value addition to the deductions made in the transitional years of 2010 and 2011.
This has been so because when the NPRA decided to issue out statements to contributors last year, it was only for 2010. However, when some of the scheme managers provided accounts to contributors, theirs covered employee deductions from 2012. The natural question was thus, where is our contribution for 2011.
In this regard, even as the NPRA maintains that its operations are being audited by an independent audit firm, it would be productive for individual statements covering the two-year period to be given out to contributors.
That is one of the surest and most effective ways of “ensuring retirement income security”.
Transparency and openness are critical in building public trust and confidence in the capacity of the NPRA, as an institutional process that has come to reverse the starvation pensions paid under the Social Security and National Insurance Trust.
Workers have to be assured and confident from the beginning that the change is for their gain, not a means of providing governments with cheap sources of funds to borrow from, to finance budget deficits, as has been the case with SSNIT funds.
More important, contributors who are moving into the new system have to be assured of what will happen to their accumulated contributions with SSNIT, in terms of the lump sum payments. This is also a potent means of “ensuring retirement income security.”
There is no need for anybody to fear operating in the open. The name of the game is transparency and it comes through the provision of information on timely basis. Workers must be told what they need to know about the new pension scheme so that their hearts could be set at ease.
There seems to be too much impunity as contributors are taken for granted. Otherwise, how can one explain that for two years, the NPRA has kept silent while agitations grow over the whereabouts and security of contributions.
Even SSNIT has now established some mechanism for reaching out to contributors, except that it has not been able to tell its contributors transiting into the new scheme how their accumulated lump sum benefits will be paid.
As our elders say, if the market will be good for the day, it shows early in the morning. Therefore, the NPRA must ensure that it provides contributors the needed information that gives them the assurance that their contributions are safe and secure.
But beyond the NPRA fulfilling its obligations, there is the need for organised labour to put its services at the disposal of workers, unionised or otherwise, such that together with their employers, they will be able to appoint scheme managers of their choice.
The situation where the NPRA is left helpless because a scheme manager has not been appointed or that the establishment has not joined any Master Trust Scheme may not be in the interest of workers. The situation may be compounded when the process of paying through SSNIT comes to an end.
The NPRA and SSNIT must organise training and sensitisation programmes for workers and employers. Unions must put pressure on their managements as they do with negotiations of salaries, for scheme managers to be appointed.
Workers have lost more than enough in the past four years. Returns on investment from scheme managers point this out. That will guarantee retirement income security.
We cannot easily forgive men who are afraid of the light by means of transparency and regular information flow.
