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{
    "id": 1144699,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/1144699/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 218,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Seme, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon (Dr.) James Nyikal",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 434,
        "legal_name": "James Nyikal",
        "slug": "james-nyikal"
    },
    "content": " Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this Bill. Let me start by congratulating the Mover of the Bill because at one point or another, it touches on everybody who is employed in the country. The Bill seeks to limit the time taken to pay people from the time they retire. This is extremely important because the current practice is to delay and delay and delay. It takes a long time before people get their retirement benefits after they go home. Further still, there is a lot of uncertainty as to whether they will be paid. You will find these people moving around from one Government office to another, from one politician’s office to another, and from their Member of County Assembly (MCA) to their Member of Parliament (MP) just to be helped to get their right. This is totally unacceptable. Limiting the time is extremely important because long periods cause enormous suffering to people who were accustomed to a regular income and had organised their lives around it. Some had even gone ahead to prepare for how they will invest and use their retirement benefits yet they fail to get them. The biggest impact on retirees is health-wise. By the time people retire at the age of 60 and above, they have a lot of health problems. Suffering for a long time aggravates the situation. Many of them get sick and die. When they die, the situation gets worse because their next of kin cannot claim their pensions. Many do not even know the process of claiming them. Those pensions remain as unclaimed assets. The country should put in place a process of tracing the owners of unclaimed assets. Some remain unclaimed because of faults in the system we have in place. It does not give them their assets when they need them. It is even worse because with that delay, the value of the income they get is reduced. They lose the opportunity to invest. If it takes years before one gets that money, what you would have invested in earlier becomes so expensive and beyond you. It has a multiplier effect. We should not think of it as only affecting the retirees. When many people in a community retire and get their incomes regularly, it has a multiplier effect on the economy of that community. When they are paid, they spend that money which supports the small businesses in the area. We are not only punishing the retirees, but also the communities in which they live. Some of those people are the most active in supporting schools, dispensaries and community developments. They cannot do that if they live in abject poverty and spend all their time chasing money that they should have received. The loss is much bigger than the direct loss to the retirees. It is a loss to the community and society at large. Therefore, this Bill has come on time and is providing a time limit. I think what we need to do when amending it is to bring very serious sanctions for failing to adhere to the set time including imposing fines on the people involved and putting interests on payments made after the time has elapsed. So, when the pensioners get their money, they are compensated for the loss incurred because of delays. Thank you, Hon. Temporary Deputy Speaker. With that, I support this Bill."
}