SATURNIA SURVIVORS IN COURT TODAY
THE surviving 130 of 236 Saturnia Fund pensioners, from BP are back in court today, 18 years after their claim was commenced.
Over the years the argu- ment has been the cour award of K26 million which Saturnia has disputed claiming that the pension- ers are only entitled to K1.2 million.
Meanwhile, 106 of their colleagues have died with- out being paid although 10 years ago in 2010 Judge Gregory Phiri ruled in their favour, noting in his judgment that, “I find that the plaintiffs were treated badly from the date of sepa- ration. Their enti- tlements were not calculated and paid in accordance with the rules.”
He ordered that pension contributions from both the employee and employer should be rendered to each employee and that the value realized should bear a penal interest based on the cur- rent average bank lending rate.
He also ordered that compound interest was due to them and awarded the cost to the employees.
Saturnia appealed to the Supreme Court.
Saturnia is run by com- panies owned by among others UPND president Hakainde Hichilema and former Zambia Privatisation agency Valentine Chitalu.
The Supreme Court of Zambia upheld the judg- ment in February 2014 and the matter went to assess- ment in 2015 during which the Pension Fund Adminis- trators, Benefits Consulting Services Limited joined the defence on behalf of the company and testified that the plaintiffs were only enti- tled to K1.2 million but the court ruled that the former employees were entitled to K26.0 million.
The company once again appealed against the assess- ment judgment in April 2016 and the Supreme Court of Zambia in its second ruling on the matter on December 18, 2018 ordered that it goes back to a second assessment under a qualified Actuary as a referee. The second assessment hearing commenced in June 2019 but was truncated in unclear circumstances without any notice to the litigants in June this year (2020).
However a notice has now been issued indicat- ing , the matter has been set for hearing before Judge A.M.Chulu on October 15, 2020.
Judge Phiri ruled in 2010, “In particular I find that each of the plaintiffs was entitled to be paid under rule 11(ii) after the transfer of their contribution from ZSIC : I enter judgement in the plaintiff’s favour and order the whole matter be treated on the basis of the rules that applied to each one of them at the time of separation. I further order that any redundancy pack- ages refunded to the de- fendant must be paid back to those of the plaintiffs affected with penal interest as awarded herein,”
The dispute in the BP Zambia Staff Final Salary pension scheme arose when the company transferred the management of the fund from Zambia State Insur- ance Corporation in January 1995 to the Saturnia Regna Pension Trust Fund which was at the time managed by Anglo American (Central Africa) Limited Financial Services Division.
At the time of transfer, the employees were promised better benefits with those who had clocked ten years and above allowed to collect both employee and employ- er contributions even if they left the company before the legal retirement age.