The National Pension Regulatory Authority (NPRA), established under the National Pensions Act, 2008, Act 766 is responsible for ensuring the compliance of the Act and approve, regulate, monitor trustees, pension fund managers, custodians and other institutions that deal with pensions as the Authority may determine.
Provision of pensions is seen by many as a fundamental economic and social importance particularly because of its role in providing retirement income security, hence the interest of contributors ought to be protected.
It is in this vein that NPRA as part of their commitment to reach out to the citizenry organized a training workshop for media about understanding the 3-Tier Pension Scheme and its emerging issues.
Explaining how more efficient as regulators they could be, the Chief Executive Officer of the NPRA, Hayford Attah Krufi mentioned categorically the need for prosecutorial powers to deal with entities and people who flout the requirements of tier 2 and 3 schemes.
According to him, in as much as they have to educate and sensitize the populace, a time comes when they have to enforce. And that the same way SSNIT could prosecute, NPRA ought to have that mandate.
“we need to be given the power to prosecute, as much as we have to educate and sensitize, it comes to a point where we have to enforce and there is a limit that we can go and that limit is the fact that we do not have prosecutorial powers,” he remarked.
Ghana, from the colonial era to date has had various pension schemes, notably the CAP 30 Pension Scheme, SSNIT Pension Scheme, Ghana Armed Forces Pension Scheme, Teacher Pension Ordinance 1995 as amended and Ghana Universities Staff Superannuation Scheme amongst others.
This brought about some disparities in the system where some people do not contribute but enjoy pension, this gave rise to public workers’ agitations leading to setting up of Presidential Commission.
The Commission recommended that the NPRA coming into office must unify all pensions schemes in Ghana. This, Mr. Hayford Attah Krufi mentioned that though it is a challenge, they are working assiduously to unify the schemes.
The authority has also developed a Consumer Protection Policy for the industry to protect the interest of consumers. The policy shall become the benchmark for assessing the service providers’ dealing with contributors and the general public.
He also revealed that both tier 2 and 3 contribute about 10.9% of the country’s GDP and that as of last year ending, the investment they made was about GHC 8.5 billion and very sure it has increased two months into 2018.
Ghana |Atinkaonline.com |Patrick Ofoe Nudzi
