Daily Nation Newspaper

EX-BANK WORKERS TO REPORT PENSION FUND TO POLICE

- By BENNIE MUNDANDO

FORMER employees of one of the commercial banks have threatened

fund to police for alleged fraud which has left them stranded as they are yet to receive their dues owed by the bank.

A representa­tive of the retires, Philemon Nyirenda, told the Daily Nation that their decision had been motivated by the 2012 High Court ruling in which Judge Philip Musonda described the fund as a fraud for abrogating its mandate towards the retirees

Mr. Nyirenda said among many irregulari­ties, the fund was involved in averaging salaries for retirees, failure to push up pension funds in line with inflation, suspected medical levies which were removed from the pension fund, and fake retirement ages for its former employees.

“We are going to open a docket and this has been motivated by Judge Philip Musonda’s judgement of March 8, 2012 where he categorica­lly says that the fund is a fraud and it is based on irregulari­ties such as fraudulent retirement ages for former employees, failure to up pension funds in line with inflation by correcting figures from the Central Statistica­l Office based on retail index, and averaging of salaries.

“Other irregulari­ties include dividends not added to the pension, wrong dates of joining for some pensioners, suspected medical levies which were removed from the pension fund, among others,” Mr. Nyirenda said.

He said the retirees were underpaid because the fund was undercapit­alised.

“Judge Musonda’s ruling says the bank was undercapit­alising the pension fund and this is the reason why there are these underpayme­nts because they found that in the end, there were insufficie­nt funds on the account and that went into fraudulent doctoring the Trust Deed.

“Judge Musonda found that the bank, as the funder, were manipulati­ng the pension fund by undercapit­alizing it. This is why there are underpayme­nts and removals. There were removals of certain people from the fund,” he said.

with the Chinese company in Beijing to enable the CRD become the anchor farmer in the farm bloc.

“Government also wants the Chinese firm to work with the Industrial Developmen­t corporatio­n (IDC) to be the special purpose vehicle in Kalungwish­i,” he said

The minister said Government was also considerat­e for the local investors in the deal and had thus allocated land to continenta­l limited, a local company that would be growing soya- bean in the farming block not to mention SEEDCO Limited which would be on board as well.

Mr Mundubile revealed that the province wanted to increase its food production capacity so that it can be the food basket for the country in view of other regions having inadequate rainfall to effects of climate

change.

He said the region had great potential for agricultur­e due to other among other things the favorable rainfall.

The minister revealed this when he briefed Finance Minister Margaret Mwanakatwe on the status of developmen­t in the province.

Meanwhile Ms Mwanakatwe had disclosed that Government was looking to the northern region as a potential food basket for the country.

She however encouraged the province to consider going for the E-voucher due to the huge savings that the country makes through this system.

Ms Mwanakatwe indicated that Government had in the last month released over K69 million to dismantle some of the debts owed to agro dealers.

to report their institutio­n’s pension

 ??  ?? Mr Mundubile
Mr Mundubile

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