Retirees from various companies which were erstwhile managed under the local authorities across the country have protested to the Local Authority Superannuation Fund – LASF over delayed pension payments by the Authority. This follows Minister of Local Government Charles Banda announcement about two weeks ago that the Ministry of Finance had released K251 million to be disbursed to over 3,600 retirees across the counrty.
Among those who gathered at LASF on October 8 2019, include retirees from Councils, ZESCO and Water Resource Companies across Zambia which had pension contributions going to LASF. Retirees have charged that despite government releasing K251 million to be disbursed, none of them have received their payments, which they said is against the agreement that the Authority had earlier made after the release of the funds.
A retiree from Lusaka City Council talked to by the Zambian Business Times – ZBT but asked for his name to be with held for fear of victimization accused the authority of deliberately delaying the disbursement and wanting to accrue bank interests from the retiree’s pension monies so that they make some extra income, at the expense of the retirees, some of whom have been waiting from 2012 (about 8 years).
“We had agreed that LASF will start paying at least 30 of us per day but what we are now seeing is them rescheduling our day of payments where others have been told to collect next year in January and April, we were called that money is already in and that the process of collecting commences now, so what is causing the delays could be because they want to get some profits from our money, all we want is our money” he said.
However, James Chipulu, a representative from the retirees group has defended LASF over the matter stating that the authority is following the First-in-First-Out system which inquires that retires collect their money according the period they retired in. He added that individuals that retired as early as 2012 will be the first to collect their money while those that retired later say 2018 will be last to receive hence following that order.
And LASF Public Relations Manager, Chishimba Milonga told ZBT in a separate interview that the authority has commenced payment of pension dues following the Fist-in-First- Out system and has projected to finish the process of payment by March 2020.
Milonga further disclosed that while the authority is on course with the pension payments, it is having challenges in processing payments due to missing documentation in some files. He added that the authority requires that its members provide correct documents to ensure that money is paid to the correct beneficiaries and not paid elsewhere, adding that this helps to avoid fraudulent activities.
The ministry of finance and the government has had a perpetual problem of not remitting monthly contributions to pension funds thereby creating this problem, if the ministry of finance released funds monthly, this problem would not arise in the first place and former government employees would not be subjected to this ill-treatment after saving the country for years.
