Making the contributory pension scheme more consumer friendly
The essence of a pension scheme is that at the end of a worker’s active years or career, he or she is able to have a seamless transition into retirement. This does not only give joy to the person and his family, but also serves as an assurance during old age.
This desire, which captures to a large extent the key objective of the pension reform under the nation’s contributory pension scheme (CPS) is becoming manifest with the number of retires currently enjoying their pension pay-outs from the different pension fund administrators.
While a lot success has been achieved so far by the CPS as investible funds under the scheme stand in excess of N3.5 trillion and 5.6 million contributors, the major success is that the bottlenecks that charaterised the old pension scheme has become a thing of the past.
This looks to get better with the continued commitment of the industry regulator, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) to make its presence available across the six geo-political zones of the country to ensure that workers and retirees have easy access to the commission for enquires and easy resolution of their challenges.
This vision is therefore driving the Commissions’ recent effort to open zonal offices of the Commission across the country, having also established a call centre which would be open to the public in October 2013 in order to enhance its service delivery through an efficient complaints resolution process.
Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, acting director general of the National Pension Commission driving this vision has commissioned three zonal offices in Calabar for South-South; Ilorin for North-Central and the latest in Lagos covering the South-West zone including Lagos, Ogun, Ekiti, Osun, Ondo and Oyo states.
Anohu-Amazu, speaking at the commissioning of the Lagos zonal office said the Commission has remained steadfast in the implementation of CPS, that within these few years of existence some modest achievements have been realised, including payment of retires who retired under the scheme since 2007.
She said the Commission embarked on the establishment of zonal offices in a bid to decentralise its activities and bring it closer to the contributors and retirees.
“With our presence in the South-West zone now, we expect all stakeholders to avail themselves of our services by visiting our offices to make enquiries, lodge complaints, and seek enlightenment on the contributory pension scheme.
The purpose, she said, is to reduce the need for contributors and retirees to travel from parts of the country to Abuja for the singular reason of accessing the commission’s services. Besides, our presence would facilitate closer interaction with the States pension offices by assisting them to comply with the CPS.
“As part of the efforts at enhancing contributors’ satisfaction, the Commission is currently exploring the possibility of allowing contributors to utilise part of their retirement savings account balances to part-finance the acquisition of low-cost houses. It is our expectation that when they eventually come on stream, these facilities would be availed to States that have fully implemented the scheme.”
The Pension Reform Act which came into being in 2004 has the objectives that include stemming the growth of outstanding pension liabilities; ensuring that every person who worked in either the public or private receives his or her retirement benefits as and when due; establishing a uniform set of rules and regulations for the administration and payment of retirement benefits in both the public and private sectors; and promoting economic growth through diversification of pension funds investment across financial and productive sectors.
By: Modestus Anaesoronye