Basic Education Teachers Union of Zambia-BETUZ has revealed that teachers receive low pension payoffs compared to other professions in the public service adding that in its current form, the pension fund is not enough to compensate a worker who would have worked for so many years.
BETUZ Public and International Relations Director Kabika Kakunta explained that a teacher who is a certificate holder and works for atleast 20 years of unbroken service before retiring at the retirement age is entitled to a pension payoff of between K400, 000 to K500, 000.
In an exclusive interview with the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Kakunta added that a retired teacher who worked for the same years but holds a diploma may receive a pension payoff between K500, 000 and 600, 000 adding that a degree holder may receive between K600, 000 and K800, 000.
Kakunta said other categories of workers such as Permanent Secretaries who could have served for the same period and are possessing the same qualifications get more money than teachers.
He noted that Members of Parliament will serve for 5 years but they are compensated highly in terms of gratuity and some of them are not even highly qualified and are diploma holders with others only having a diploma but in that 5 years, they will qualify for a motor vehicle of their choice and a huge gratuity after their term ends.
“But it is the same country that is compensating one category of workers in a certain fashion and another category of workers in another fashion. The pension to us is the last money that a worker gets after toiling for government between 25-30 years of service and they come out of their service with less than a million kwacha”, he said.
“It is that same money that they would want to buy their retirement house, maybe they were staying in a government house and when you compute all those you begin to see that the value for money does not match the service that these teachers give to government becauseat the end of the day we have always said that the children that we have taught in the end begin to determine poor pensions for us”, Kakunta added.
Kakunta mentioned that in the pension reforms,government must begin to work out how they can standardize the payment package so that the package is equal to the service provided.
“What is the argument for someone who could have worked only for 5 years as member of Parliament as compared to a teacher who has served for 20-30 years in government and have qualifications”, he said.
He added that these are dynamics that government should start talking about and ensure that workers benefit from these pension funds adding that as a labour movement, BETUZ has been advocating that these pension houses should go in a venture where they build houses and sell them to contributors like teachers so that whilst they are working,they would have already had a house where the pension fund can be deducting slowly.
“One thing that we see is that they get money from the members and when you see the houses that they build,for example those houses for NAPSA which are at SOS, no teacher can afford to buy such houses from their pensions but they have been built by the teachers’ contributions, they are expensive even to rent”, he said.
Kakunta said retirees are not able to leave comfortable lives afterwards because of the low funds they receive and that is why most of them die early as their pensions do not meet their aspirations after employment.
