NSSA ready to increase monthly benefits, but . . .

be pushed out of business, Parliament heard last week.
NSSA general manager Mr James Matiza told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare that his organisation had the capacity to increase pension benefits.
Legislators had bemoaned the paltry monthly benefits pensioners were receiving.
“The NSSA Act requires that the board meets to review monthly benefits at the end of each year and last year we met with workers’ representatives where the issue of the low monthly benefits was also raised and we also met employer representatives,” said Mr Matiza.
“It was then agreed that we raise the allowance from US$40 to US$60 and that was recommended to the minister while invalidity allowances and those for widows and children were raised to US$30, up from US$20.
“However, private pension players appealed to Government that if NSSA were to raise the benefits it would affect their benefits and push them out of business.”
Mr Matiza said the International Labour Organisation commissioned a study to establish the effect of NSSA benefits payouts on private pension schemes.
“The ILO said they would be ready with the report this month and that is what we are waiting for,” he said.
NSSA is paying US$40 in retirement pension and US$20 for invalidity, survivors and children allowances.
However, Chiwundura representative Cde Kizito Chivamba said it was disheartening that NSSA had bailed out Renaissance Merchant Bank with large sums of money when they were failing to support ordinary workers who contributed their hard-earned money.
“It’s sad that you are directing money to organisations that mismanaged money on their own yet people who contribute are getting peanuts,” he said.
Cde Chivamba requested that the authority furnishes the committee with a report on the RMB bailout. RMB was placed under curatorship by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe following the unearthing of financial irregularities at the bank.
It was, however, removed from curatorship following the intervention of NSSA, which invested US$24 million into the troubled bank.
The committee’s chairperson, Cde Margaret Zinyemba (Mazowe South), said ordinary people in rural areas were failing to make ends meet while the authority was making investments that did not directly benefit them.
Mr Matiza, however, said they only arrived at monthly payouts on the recommendation of actuaries.
Last year NSSA paid out US$44,8 million to 129 753 beneficiaries.