Is this pension gift a horse deal?
On April 8 the government presented three Bills – the Employees' Pension Benefits Fund Bill, the Overseas Employees' Pension Benefits Fund Bill and the Pensions (Consequential Provisions) Bill -- in parliament to pave the way for the setting up of a contributory pension scheme for those who are employed in the private sector, in foreign employment or for those who are self employed. These Bills will be debated and probably approved when taken up for the second reading on April 27 and would be effective from May 1.
A few days before the Bills were suddenly and unexpectedly slipped into parliament, Labour Minister Gamini Lokuge and his ministry officials had assured trade unions and employers that another round of talks would be held between finance ministry officials and the stakeholders before preparing the final draft to be presented in parliament.
Despite these assurances no further discussions were held and the Bills, which will have an impact on the lives of nearly two million private sector employees, in their present format appeared to be more of an exercise in ambiguity than of clarity.
The number of unanswered questions and the uncertainty as to how the various provisions in the Bills would be implemented on the ground ran into thunder and lightning from trade unions, employees and employers. Among the questions that need to be answered are whether the scheme is optional or mandatory? Does it apply only to those who are employed on a permanent basis? How do the benefits accrue at retirement? In case of a pensioner dying soon after retirement, will his or her family continue to receive the pension and how will the scheme be sustained?
The private sector pension scheme requires that the employee contributes two per cent of his or her salary while the employer contributes a similar amount with an additional contribution of 10 per cent from the employee’s retirement gratuity. An employee qualifies for his pension at the age of 60 and the quantum of the pension would depend on the number of years an employee has contributed to the fund.
Trade unions say the cabinet paper seeking approval for a private sector pension scheme was different in tone and tenor from the Bills that were presented in parliament last week by Prime Minister D.M. Jayaratne.
The stakeholders are of the view that Bills such as these should have been presented in parliament only after fine tuning them through open discussion and debate because an important fact we should keep in mind is that the private sector pension scheme unlike the one catering to the public sector is of a contributory in nature.
The Ceylon Federation of Labour (CFL) had said this scheme was being adopted by the government to pander to the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) while some other unionists say that the pension scheme is a source for the cash-strapped government to borrow from.
A question being asked by political analysts is whether the Bills are being rushed through parliament so that the government in a breaking news announcement on May Day could proclaim that unlike previous administrations the Rajapaksa regime had not ignored private sector employees and now that the government had gifted them with a pension scheme, these employees too could live happily ever after.
With the dawn of the National New Year we wish that Sri Lanka’s transformation into the wonder of Asia is built on the bedrock of a participatory democracy based on good governance and transparency.
0 comments:
Post a Comment