Trustfund Parleys Employers on Pension Challenges

Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja

In continuation of its resolve to stamp out challenges faced by workers on retirement and guarantee a seamless process, Trustfund Pension Plc recently engaged employers of labour to plug loopholes arising from employers’ end.
Speaking at an employers’ forum/interactive session, organised in Abuja, in collaboration with Zenith Pensions Custodian, the Chief Compliance Officer of Trustfund, Mrs. Rachael Osa-Obi, said a lot of issues arising from documentation issues from employers’ pension desk officers (PDOs), among others constituted challenges to seamless pension administration.

She also noted that the forum was designed to impress it upon employers to comply with extant provisions that fast-tract remittance.
She said it was in a bid to correct such grey areas that Trustfund, in collaboration with Zenith Pensions Custodian decided to parley with PDOs of employers to stamp out impediments to workers enjoying their pension on retirement.
Osa-Obi, also disclosed that the forum was designed to impress it upon employers to remit

“That’s is why we have brought these PDOs; PDOs are pension desk officers. They are the ones responsible for remittances. It depends probably in your organisation. “They are PDOs in one organisation and in another organisation it might be the accountant, but we classify all of them as pension desk officers.

“They are the ones handling pension matters. Now what has been happening over the years is a situation where people are just not diligent enough to want to do what is needful to ensure that money can be credited into the account of stakeholders once the money hits our account with the custodian.
“For instance, I’m a PDO for Water Board, I have 150 employees under that account, each employee has a pin which is a unique identifier.

“Each pin belongs to a different holder. Then, as a PDO, instead of reflecting my pin against my name, I will have my name and put your pin against my name and once you upload, the system immediately rejects.

“It’s incorrect. You also have situations where the money is stuck, it goes into what we call CRA (suspense account for moneys we are not able to identify the owner) so it’s now be for us as the custodian to go look for those people to come and do those connections, we have problems even after getting this people, because of who we are. “We are in a hurry and impatient, just correct it now now and that’s it, let not they will do same exact thing. Can’t the system be made in such a way that once it’s correct it automatically uploads itself?

“That’s is why we talked about the system put in place, that will not allow you to pay if for instance pins are incorrect, that system will not allow you to pay if your contribution is below what you ought to contribute,” he said.