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{
    "id": 853157,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/853157/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 312,
    "type": "speech",
    "speaker_name": "Funyula, ODM",
    "speaker_title": "Hon. (Dr.) Wilberforce Oundo",
    "speaker": {
        "id": 13331,
        "legal_name": "Wilberforce Ojiambo Oundo",
        "slug": "wilberforce-ojiambo-oundo-2"
    },
    "content": "Unions are separate entities from the membership. My view is that at the point of the Committee of the whole House, we might consider allowing members to appoint or elect their own to sit in the board of trustees as a common practice in all pension schemes that are either in the private sector or for government bodies like parastatals. The second issue that I find very commendable is the introduction of sharia that takes care of the Muslim faith that seems to have been ignored in most pension schemes or the Retirement Benefits Act. The Bill provides various service providers as required under the Retirement Benefits Act. However, probably, the issue of the corporate administrator being formed by the trustees might bring a conflict of interest. I would urge the drafter of the Bill to consider a situation where they employ the very many administrators that are licenced to provide administration services by Retirement Benefits Authority. On the issue of the contribution, the Bill proposes that each member contributes 12 per cent, either higher or lower, as the minister or the board might dictate. I suggest that we tighten up that particular provision and only probably consider a fixed percentage depending on the evaluation by the actuary employed for this purpose. We have had a problem in this country where employers deduct members’ contributions but they never remit them or if they remit them, they remit them so late that the investment value is eroded over time. I was fortunate to be involved in an assignment some years back where we had to recommend that various county governments or local authorities, as they were known then, surrender some of their fixed properties like land and buildings to LAPFUND for purposes of offsetting the huge debts that had been accumulated by their failure to remit funds to the scheme. I note that the Bill proposes an elaborate system of recovering the money but I am not so sure how that can be recovered from a county government considering that there seems to be a provision somewhere in law that you cannot attach government assets to pay for debts incurred. We need to find a formula of how we can get these county governments to honour this in view of the cases where they have outstanding public debt which they have not paid. As I conclude, it is my call that once the Bill comes into effect and becomes an Act of Parliament those members charged with the responsibility of managing these funds need to be people of integrity. They should manage the funds for the benefit of the members now and in future to avoid a situation where we have so many scandals at NSSF and other government- The electronic version of the Official Hansard Report is for information purposes only. Acertified version of this Report can be obtained from the Hansard Editor."
}