Unpaid 2016 accrued rights of retirees now 4 months – PenCom
Retirement comes as trauma for many workers – Expert
The Federal Government has cleared the accrued rights of workers who retired between January and August 2016.
The National Pension Commission A pension expert has said that retirement usually comes as a trauma to many workers in Nigeria.
Speaking at a capacity workshop for retired para-military officers in Abuja, recently, the pension expert, J. Ogar, said the trauma is usually due to the feeling of redundancy that accompanies retirement.
Ogar said the feeling of dislocation from a structured work environment, loss of regular pay check and societal in a statement signed by the Acting Director General, Aisha Dahir-Umar, said the unpaid 2016 accrued rights of retirees now remains only four months.
It can be recalled that retirees from the public service who retired and family pressures and rejection contribute to the trauma.
“To succeed in retirement, you have to develop and have a new identity. Retirement comes with loss of monthly income, no doubt, but for some, it also comes with loss of personality, low self-esteem and even respect which were taken for granted while in office,” he said.
He tasked pensioners to, rather than see the challenges that accompany retirement as draw backs, appreciate them as in 2016 have not been able to access their retirement benefits due to the inability of the federal government to settle backlog of accrued rights.
For public service workers who migrated to the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) in 2004, shortly before they retired, they are entitled to two components of retirement benefits: the contributions accumulated in their Retirement Savings Accounts (RSA) and their accrued rights from the time they joined the service to the time they migrated to the CPS.
Accrued rights are the benefits which the workers who had worked for the government prior to 2004 when the CPS was introduced are entitled to.
So, in addition to the retirees’ contributions from 2004 to date, the federal government must pay the retirees their accrued rights before the total benefits can be paid out.
In what appears to be a deliberate policy to ensure that the federal government settles the backlog of accrued rights, the National Pension Commission (PenCom) directed PFAs not to allow the retirees access to their retirement savings until the federal government releases the accrued rights component. the dynamics retirement.
“Rather than feel bad, abandoned and no longer relevant, chart a new course of life for yourself and fashion out ways and means to integrate yourself into the mainstream of things,” he told pensioners.
He urged them to plan, network, maintain meaningful contacts and even venture into new means of earning a living in order to remain relevant in the society and mitigate the trauma. associated with