Pension defaulting employers under fresh criticism
NBM Pension Fund, a subsidiary of National Bank of Malawi plc, has condemned institutions not remitting pension, saying they are not caring about their employees’ future as well as the country’s development.
The firm’s chief executive officer William Mabulekesi said this on Friday in Lilongwe during client sensitisation seminar on pension.
He said: “If the latest report by the Reserve Bank of Malawi [RBM] is anything to go by, they are saying a number of employers are yet to remit K30 billion. An employee is an important asset in any company or any employment setup.
“You can have infrastructure, but you need to have a human being in order to be productive. So, such types of employers do not have the welfare of workers at heart.”
Mabulekesi said the defaulters’ conduct has the potential to impact negatively on their workers once they retire.
“You start as young and you grow old and you cannot work for the rest of your life. The ultimate objective of pension is to keep money for the day you are out of employment which you can use for your health, food and clothes,” he said.
Mabulekesi further said the pension funds are invested in the country’s development initiatives, as such, failure to remit impacts the nation.
One of the seminar’s participants, Evelyn Mkundika, who is AHL Group Pension Fund trustee, said there was need to sensitise the employees to how pension is administered.
She said: “We receive a lot of questions from employees which we are unable to respond to sometimes.
“So, if pension administrators can arrange meetings with our employees at our offices, it would help them to clarify some issues, especially the regulations.”
Recently, RBM said over 800 companies owe administrators billions of kwacha in unremitted pension money.
The central bank earlier this month condemned the employers’ conduct while disclosing that it has launched legal action against some institutions over the same.
