Dissolve PIA, Musoma urges Govt

Tue, 13 Jun 2017 13:59:28 +0000

By BENNIE MUNDANDO

GOVERNMENT should immediately dissolve the Pensions and Insurance Authority (PIA) as a remedial measure to root out illegalities at Saturnia as some officials are accomplices to the underhand methods employed by fund managers, the Zambia Republican Party (ZRP) has charged.

Last month, Finance Minister Felix Mutati directed the PIA to appoint an independent auditor to assess the financial and operational governance of Saturnia Regna within 30 days following a stand-off between fund managers and the trustees over glaring irregularities that has rocked the institution.

Bencon and Aflife, which are fund managers and fund administrators for Zambia’s biggest private pension fund, are engaged in a battle for control in order to conceal clandestine activities which include the unauthorized offshore investments amounting to ZMW 399,472,609.00

Statutory Instrument (SI) number 141 of 2011 section 11 (1) allows a pension fund to invest up to 30 percent of its fund size outside the Republic as may be authorized by the minister under the Act.

Due to dissatisfaction in the manner the fund is running, trustees implored the Government to check the accounts to establish the recipients of any payments which may have been made from the accounts from the date of investment, in whose names the payments may have been made, the interest rates applicable and the date of maturity.

But speaking to the Daily Nation yesterday, ZRP president Wright Musoma said while he appreciated the directive to have Saturnia audited, nothing much would be achieved in Government’s quest to protect the interest of pensioners as PIA was held hostage by strong cartel elements who were out to protect their allies.

Mr. Musoma said the fact that the agency had failed to act over its findings in its report on Saturnia, was evidence that the audit would just be an exercise in futility as the agency could settle for a user-friendly firm to cover the mess created by Saturnia.

“We appreciate the directive to PIA to engage a private auditor to investigate Saturnia but we are worried that even with this undertaking, the pensioners’ interests may not be fully actualised because we are alive to the fact that the same agency is fully aware of what has been happening at Saturnia as the fund failed to answer to many irregularities identified in its 2014 report but did nothing.

“Our demand is that the agency be dissolved immediately if we are to bring sanity.

There is no need to wait because pensioners’ lives are at stake here. PIA is held hostage by a strong cartel and allowing it to continue administering over the interest of Zambians is a time bomb that we will not  allow to continue. Already, there are a lot of sinister activities going on and surely we cannot fold our arms and wait until the situation gets out of hand,” Mr. Musoma said.

Last week, the Daily Nation sent a follow-up press query to Benefits Consulting Services Limited after they issued a joint press release with Aflife to dispute articles that have appeared in the paper in which they failed to answer specific issues such as the offshore accounts but no reply has been given to-date.