The National Pension Commission has put in place a framework to recover the pension contributions not remitted by defaulting employers under the Contributory Pension Scheme nationwide.
A competent source told the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Abuja that PenCOM had developed compliance measures on all employers under the new scheme.
The Pension Reform Act of 2014 is clear on consequences of contravention of Section 11, sub section 3 by employers, who for any reason, fail to remit workers’ monthly contribution to the Pension Fund Administrators.
The act provides sanctions for any employer who fails to remit pension contributions within seven working days of payment of salary.
It states that such employers, in addition to making the remittances already due, must pay penalty of not less than two per cent per month for the benefit of the Retirement Saving Account holder.
The source said in pursuance of the statutory responsibility of ensuring compliance, the commission had deployed an application, Risk Management Analysis System, for monitoring remittance of pension contributions by employers.
NAN learnt that the application enables the commission to monitor the status of the monthly remittance of contribution by all employers, where employees had opened RSA.
According to the source, the structure, amongst others, also provides for the appointment of Recovery Agents.
It stated that PenCom had identified and assigned over 15,000 employers to Recovery Agents to review their records and recover any outstanding pension contributions and the penalty fees.
The source further stated that PenCom followed up on complaints from workers against their employers for failure to remit pension contributions when due.
NAN was further told that appropriate actions, including legal actions, were now being taken within the time frame stipulated by the commission against employers that defaulted on remission of pension funds.
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