General News of Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Source: peacefmonline.com

Pensions Saga: Gov't refused Labor's trustees because of politics

After weeks of nationwide strike by 12 labor unions over the tier two funds management, the spokesperson for the striking workers, Mr. Reynolds Tenkorang has stated that the reason for the fight over which company to manage the tier two funds is political.

According to him, the Minister for Employment and Labor Relations, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu rejected all the fund managing companies chosen by the unions with the reason that the 12 labor unions have deliberately selected opposition companies.

Five Trustee companies “Enterprise Trustee Limited, Provident Life Trust Company, Universal Pensions Master Trust Limited, GLICO Pension Trustee Limited and Pensions Alliance Trust Limited” were shortlisted for the bid to manage the pensions but the committee finally settled on Pension Alliance Trust.

Recently, the Minister of Communications, Dr. Omane Boamah told newsmen at a press conference that the selection of Pension Alliance Trust to administer the second tier pension contribution by public workers in the country was not a unilateral decision taken by government as the company was chosen by the Pension Committee after it had met all the requirements.

But speaking about what went into selecting Pension Alliance Trust as a trustee to manage the second tier scheme, Mr. Tenkorang revealed on Oman Fm’s Morning Show that Hon. Haruna Iddrisu told the labor unions that government will never allow opposition companies to manage the tier two funds as they will use the money to finance the NPP in the 2016 election campaign.

“There is an issue we decided not talk about in public, but if the pro-NDC newspapers are saying that we are collecting the money for opposition to do campaign, then let’s talk about it; the reason behind the fight over the tier two fund management is that the government first told us that the companies we have selected are opposition companies and they will never agree for the opposition to use the funds for 2016 campaign. It was later that we proved to the Minister that we selected the companies without party colors; we told him we don’t do politics as unions because we know that when a new government takes over power, we will work with new leaders…Hon. Haruna Iddrisu was the one who said that,” he revealed.