RETIREMENT PLANNING AND PENSION REFORM ACT 2004

I put this question before you today. Think deeply about it before you reply. When is the best time to start planning your retirement? Today, 10 years from now, 10 years before you retire?
My answer to that question is that you should start planning immediately you start setting your long term career and investment goals. Today unlike in the past, people plan to retire early.
The Pension Reform Act 2004 by its provisions, sensitizes employees about thinking about early retirement from the first day of employment as you have to open your retirement account with a PFA as soon as you start work and it provides for early retirement by age fifty.

ramael

http://pensioneasysolutions.com

This Pension Reform is a killer of employees. Tell me, how can you serve the government for 20 years and you are paid only 25% of your entitlement with the excuse that you are not upto 50 years or put in 35 years in service.? How do you want the man to start life?I know PENCOM will tell you to go look for another job but is that the right way? If the government can not continue to pay pension for life for civil servants, the government should think of payoff on retirement. Nigeria is not matured for executing pension fund because so many fundamentals to enable a civil servant survive after retirement are not there. Salary is not sufficient to meet daily needs. No easy access to credit facilities. The housing schemes put in place to enable poor civil servants acquire low income houses are ursuped by the rich. No incentives to get more when you put in more. No electricity to enable them set up small biz. From my observation, no civil servant can build a personal house without some element of corruption in Nigeria.

In fact, the real reason why government is finding payment of pension difficult is because of corruption at high level. How much does an average pensioner collect per month, by the way? The government should not just copy something because it is done else where. We should look at our own perculiarities to tackle our problems. I tell more solemnly, Pension reform has increased the level of corruption among civil servants now than ever, because the future is very bleak and the civil servant wants to secure himself against the doom that is to come. Government should scrap it with immediate effect. What help do they think they are rendering to the average civil servant when they the leaders do not put in place structures to support good life in this country? Our leaders go abroad for medication, while our hospitals are in tatters. They send their children abroad for the best education while our educational sector is in shambles. In short, our leaders do not wish the average civil servant well because the basic necesities for a good life are not in Nigeria.

As a solution to the existing pension reform, I will suggest that government should fight corruption; this is the drain pipe to which the money of the nation goes to a few pockets. Provide electricity. Government should adopt the option of payoff instead of pension for life.