By Comrade Jatau Monday Ali

Certain things do not cross the mind until one physically comes in contact with them. This is not because they don’t exist, but since one has never been directly affected by them, one scarcely gives them a thought. I want to make a case for the teeming construction workers in Nigeria who are dying daily under the chokehold of the laws governing pension administration in the country.

Before the Pension Reform Act 2004 under President Olusegun Obasanjo (as he then was), the pension system in practice in Nigeria was the Defined Benefits scheme in the public service which was scantily funded through annual budgetary allocations, late release of funds for pension rights and the prevalent humongous pension funds mismanagement/embezzlement between pension managers and the trustees of pension funds. The pension system scarcely covered the private sector, the construction workers inclusive.

Pained by the foregoing, the pension administration in Nigeria considered it necessary to make a move towards eliminating the problems related to pension in the country. That was when the Pension Reform Act 2004 was given birth to.

Among the lofty and laudable objectives of the PRA 2004 were: To ensure that every person who worked in either the public service of the federation, Federal capital territory or private sector receives his retirement benefits as and when due; To ensure that pensioners are not subjected to untold suffering due to inefficient and cumbersome process of pension payment: etc.

In order that the lofty objectives of the PRA would not be violated, the National Pension Commission (Pencom) was established under the Act empowered with supervisory authority over the licensed Pension Fund Administrator PFA’s. It would be ten years later before the 2004 PRA became repealed to be replaced by the PRA 2014 signed by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan one 1st July, 2014.

As laudable as the Pension Reform Act objectives appear, we in the construction industry are negatively affected by the stronghold of the pension laws.

Let me establish here that, people suffer so much on account of job hazards, it has to be noted too, that more than 90% of the construction workforce do not have formal education and lastly, let it be known too that the job security in the industry is so fragile that more than half of the workforce scarcely exceed three years in continuous service.

With the foregoing challenges in view, there always arise situations that throw the construction worker/pensioners into deep pains of frustration, desperation when they seek to collect their pension benefits after work.
Similarity in names: There abound situations whereby a construction pensioner who had a name like Adamu Isah similar to another who is Isah Adamu are forced to swear to numerous affidavits to ascertain the true identity of who is who.
There are many construction workers who are not even aware that they have a Retirement Savings Account [RSA] somewhere and upon severance, they simply retreat to their villages and their contributions remain a lost fund with the PFA’s.
In the construction industry, no body enjoys gratuity since sections 20,21 and 22 of the National Joint Industrial Council agreement (a law that regulates the conditions of service in the construction industry) were expunged in 2012, the 25% initial lump sum withdrawal is abysmally too small for someone who has suffered hazards at work and has attained the ripe age of fifty years with large sum in savings only to be paid trifle sum and the rest of the money kept in the name of programmed withdrawal for a period spanning eighteen years or more after retirement.

A programmed withdrawal is a method by which the employee collects his/her retirement benefits in a periodic sums spread through the length of an estimated life span. These withdrawals are shamefully too small to do anything meaningful for a person who had been on a good salary during his working days. Some people are paid N5000 per month and they are coming from far interior villages to the town to access the money so what use will the money be to them?

There are too frequent verifications of pensioners leading to pensioners dying during verification exercise. In order that the construction retirees could get a let-off from the ordeals, we in the industry are of the considered opinion that our employers be empowered to be the custodians of our pension deductions.

Among other benefits: The companies are direct employers of the workers and they have a day to day interaction so the issues of confusion in identify will never arise at the time of claiming benefits.

Benefits would be calculated together with severance pay and lump sums given to retirees to enable them start up small scale businesses as opposed to the pittance paid in programmed withdrawals.

There will not be any concern of verification of pensioner as all the workers on the employers’ payrolls are not alien to them and they will have no qualms paying their benefits.
The employer companies can hold the contributions as collateral to give salary advances and loans to the workers unlike what obtains now with the PFA’s whereby a retiree who has up to five hundred thousand naira in his RSA and his child dies of common malaria because he could not pay twenty thousand naira bills in the hospital.

It’s instructive that any law meant for the people which offers more burden to them than benefits need to be revisited. The national assembly will certainly do us whole lot of good if they amend the Pension Reform Act with the construction worker in mind.

Comrade Jatau Monday Ali is a construction workers’ Union Chairman at S.C.C Nigeria Limited.
07036503754.

PENCOM right now is a joke. Needs to be un-bundled in the full glare of the public. Contributory Pension Scheme is a good idea if well facilitated.

We've got the right infrastructure, the right framework [award winning infact, by African standards] but as usual the wrong accountability and assets management strategies !!!

Suited thieves, clowns in babariga and dullards in agbada have hijacked Pencom as well, to the peril its subscribers.

They're sitting on one of the largest pools of Subscriber Funds, living cool in the offices and leaving people to roast after decades of selling them vain hope.