PenOp wants FG to release retirees’ accrued rights

The Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria (PenOp) has called on the Federal Government to urgently release the outstanding accrued rights of its retirees so that their benefits can be paid without further delay.

The President of PenOp, Misbahu Yola, who made the call at an interactive session with journalists in Abuja, said the last time the fund was released was in February.

Yola declared that the inability of the federal government to release those funds is having a negative impact on the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS).

“There are a few challenges with the accrued rights. We have been told that it would be paid soon. The last one was paid in February 2015. These are issues that affect the confidence in the system,” he said.

According to him, when the National Pension Commission (PenCom) executive members visited the Presidency, they raised the issue of the accrued rights and President Muhammadu Buhari promised that the accrued rights would be paid soon.

He estimated the value of the accrued rights and outstanding contribution to be about N100 billion.

He argued that the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) works perfectly, but that the delayed accrued rights payment is dragging the shadow of the old scheme into the new system and making it look ineffective.

He noted that without the rights, operators cannot aggregate the retirement savings account balance and calculate retirees’ lump sum and programmed withdrawal, thereby leaving them without pensions.

The PenCom DirectorGeneral, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, in an introductory note to President Buhari when the Commission’s executive members visited him, had assured that “payment of retirement benefits under the scheme to retirees, as well as death claims to beneficiaries of deceased employees, were regular and timely except for the delays being experienced in the settlement of accrued benefits of FGN retirees and deceased employees whenever there are delays in the funding of the Retirement Benefits Bond Redemption Fund by the FGN, as was the case in 2012, 2014 and 2015.”

She said “N483.33bn has been released into the Retirement Benefits Bonds Redemption Fund Account by the FGN, which was invested by the Central Bank of Nigeria and yielded N7.71bn between 2006 and March 2015.”

Anohu-Amazu, however, noted “that the Federal Government was yet to release monthly mandates for the payment of accrued rights for September to December 2014, and April to August 2015, which amounted to N35.30bn.”