The wanton award of tax and non-tax incentives to large scale mining companies by successive Zambian governments has resulted in over 20,000 employees and ex-employees of two large mining companies to miss out on the National Pension Scheme Authority – NAPSA partial withdrawal benefits even after working for over 10 years.
Over 20,000 Konkola Copper Mines – KCM and Mopani Copper Mines – MCM employees and ex-employees are unable to claim for their NAPSA partial withdraw benefits after working for over 10 years for the two mining houses.
After the signing into law of the National Pension Scheme Amendment Bill 2023 which allows for the partial withdrawal of pensions, about 12, 000 KCM employees & ex-employees (at the time under Vedanta) and over 10, 000 Mopani (at the time under Glencore) employees and ex-employees do not qualify for NAPSA partial withdrawal, at 20 percent, of the retirement benefits by beneficiaries who made 60 months contributions to NAPSA or have attained the age of 45.
On the 17th of April 2023, the President of the Republic of Zambia, Mr. Hakainde Hichilema announced the signing into law of the National Pension Scheme Amendment Bill 2023 allows for the partial withdrawal of pensions.
As stated by President Hichilema, the new law will give citizens the opportunity to re-invest the funds into various ventures and assets of their choice. As a result, this will inject liquidity into the economy thereby, more jobs will be created, contributing to the national economic development agenda.
However, the Zambian Business Times – ZBT can exclusively disclose that about 22, 000 KCM and Mopani employees will miss out of cashing out of their pre-retirement Lump sum benefit due to waivers that were given to these large scale copper mines.
The National Union of Miners and Allied Workers – NUMAW president SAUL SIMUJIKA confirmed to ZBT in an exclusive interview that both KCM and Mopani from sometime in 2004, had a waiver for remitting NAPSA, so they were not remitting both employer and employee contributions, meaning people were not getting any deductions.
Simujika added that the two mines were however not breaking the law because they were given that waiver by [the MMD administration] Government, meaning they were still acting within the law and waivers given to them.
“People [and the two mining companies] never contributed and they can’t claim because they didn’t contribute from somewhere from 2004 up to about 2015 when KONKOLA Copper Mine (KCM) and Mopani Copper Mine (MCM) started remitting statutory contributions for their workers to the National Pensions Scheme Authority (NAPSA).”
This followed Government‘s move to sign Statutory Instrument (SI) number one of 2014 which revoked the exemption of the two mining companies from contributing to NAPSA.
He said everybody who was working there during that period are unable to claim for their benefits and remember the two mines had thousands of employees but after somewhere in 2014 when the two mines resumed the contributions, people started receiving deductions.
For KCM around that time, it had over 12 000 and about 10 000 employees for Mopani and all these are unable to get their benefits though most of them have even retired and only those that are still in employment qualify for the benefit after the contribution was reversed.
When asked about the position of the union Simujika said, “It is not something that we can negotiate because it is Government that had given KCM and Mopani waiver so there is nothing that we can do.”
There has been documented historical misdeeds by both Vedanta and Glencore to local suppliers and employees, with accusations of arm twisting government officials and not paying taxes but reports are indicating that these same firms are plotting a return to Zambia after being exited. This NAPSA issue is just but one of the glaring examples of misdeeds.
Meanwhile efforts to get a comment from KCM Management on how many employees are able to claim their NAPSA benefits since the signing into law of the National Pension Scheme Amendment Bill 2023 which allows for the partial withdrawal of pensions, proved futile by press time.
