The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) has emphasised the need for the National Assembly to amend the pension law for more robust packages for workers.
Shehu Muhammed, ASCSN national president, made this known at a news conference on Wednesday in Lagos.
Muhammed lamented that pension-related challenges have continued to linger in Nigeria as many attempts to tackle them have not been quite successful.
According to him, many employers fail to remit their contributions to the employees’ retirement savings accounts (RSAs). He said that an affected employee would, therefore, not have access to his or her terminal benefit until the employer would pay up.
“From this, you can see that there is no difference between the old system and the new system; we are all coming back to square one, where you spend years without having access to your terminal benefit.
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“Some retirees have died without having access to their retirement benefits.
“However, we still have a window: those who formulated the law, the National Assembly.
“That is our next bus stop because the complaint we are receiving across the country from our members is that the contributory pension scheme should go.
“It is no more beneficial to the workers of Nigeria. We are still going back to the National Assembly with suggestions as regards amendment of the law to pave the way for us to have access to our money immediately after exiting the service”, he said.
On employment, the labour leader urged governments to come up with policies and programmes that would provide job opportunities, citing thousands of students graduating from tertiary institutions who must be productively engaged.
