PENSION AND THE INFORMAL SECTOR
The pension scheme should be more inclusive
ans who have been practically left behind.
As things stand today, the CPS must be deepened to provide social security to low income earners in both the formal and informal sectors, especially those who diligently contribute their (paltry) sums. In other words, such contributors must be guaranteed a minimum payout given pre-defined parameters. This would be an incentive to low-income workers, particularly those within the informal sector to contribute to their retirement savings accounts as regularly as possible.
In addition to developing strategies that encourage contribution, the regulator must embark on significant awareness/enlightenment campaigns to inform people of the benefits of pension contribution and ease their fears about the genuineness of the current pension system. The Nigerian pension system must go beyond serving 6.4 million adults (figure as at end of March 2015) to becoming more inclusive in order to actualise the purpose for which the contributory pension system was established. This pension system cannot become another source of inequality between the rich and poor or between the formal and informal sectors.
We commend the PenCom for its current nationwide inter-face with workers in the informal sector ahead of the commencement of the micro-pension scheme expected to take off before the end of this year. Addressing participants at the one day workshop for self-employed tailors and garment workers affiliated to the National Union of Textile, Garment and Tailoring Workers of Nigeria (NUTGTWN) in Lagos, Director-General of PenCom, Mrs. Chinelo Anohu-Amazu, disclosed the plan to bring over 50 million workers in the informal sector into the CPS using the Micro Pension initiative.
To achieve that objective, the PENCOM authorities must therefore act deliberately by moving beyond current achievements to what can be done to exponentially increase scale of coverage and to indeed make this a contributory pension system for all. We believe it is possible and we urge AnohuAmazu and her team to redouble their efforts in that direction.