The CEO of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Mr Hayford Attah Krufi, has called on the government to give the authority prosecutorial powers to prosecute employers who fail to pay social security contribution.
Mr Krufi said the core mandate of the authority which is to inform and educate people on the need to have retirement income security is gradually changing towards enforcing and ensuring that consumers have value for money and enjoy better pay out at the end of the service.
“With these powers, the authority will be able to hold employers and companies to task when they fail to remit monthly contribution to the mandatory tier 1 and tier 2 pension schemes,” Mr Krufi said.
Mr Krufi made these statements in Accra on Thursday at a media training exercise on the implementations of the 3-tier pension which is the voluntary group or the personal pension scheme.
He said after the establishment of the National Pensions Act, 2008, Act 766 which was amended by Act 883, through its mandate of informing and educating has been able to sensitise the general public and employers on the need to ensure their retirement security by paying monthly contributions.
The CEO said, however, there are still handfuls of employers and companies who are yet to oblige to this mandatory social security contribution and may need enforcement from the authority to comply.
Mr Krufi said the Act stipulates that the minimum age of membership is 15 years and maximum age of 45 years who are working must mandatory oblige to pay monthly contribution to ensure his/her security in the future.
He said the authority was put in place to oversee the administration and manage of the composite schemes to ensure that the various regulatory bodies of the scheme such as the trustees, fund management and the likes adhere to the rules of safeguarding their investment.
“It will interest you to know that the assets for tier-2 alone stands at GHȼ8.5b which keeps on changing and accounting for 5.4% of GDP growth and we have not even factored in Social Security and National Insurance Trust pension which if you add will be hinting at least 20% of GDP.
He said the industry has service providers which “we called industry players are steadily growing with a current number of 34 cooperate trustees, 75 fund managers’ and16 custodians with about 261 registered schemes operating.”
One of the things “we want to ensure in our country is that anybody who works in any shape or form contribute to the pension under the unification of pension which comprise of Section 213 of the Act and everyone was suppose to come under the tier-3 scheme but unfortunately that is not the case so we are working acidulously towards making sure that, this section of the Act is actualise.
Mr NPRA boss said another thing “we are trying hard to push is that the contributor’s interest is always supreme and the contributor is the best regulator and because we are not in that position, the NPRA is position to ensure how the fund is managed.”
Base on this the authority has embark on the consumer protection process where a policy is adopted to manage where every action of the provider is aimed at protection the contributor, in the form of transparency, complaints procedure will make them clearly in mind and have a say.
Answering question, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Mr David Tetteh Armey-Abbey said the authority is amid at investing contributor’s funds to ensure that there is risk free.
Mr Tetteh said that the total assets management for tier 2 and 3 private pension fund as at January 31, 2018 was at GHȼ10.9b adding that the authority has as at the end of January 31 has transferred GH555m.
Source: Philip Antoh/Daily Heritage
