The National Pension Commission (PenCom) has warned private employees in the private sector against opening multiple retirement savings accounts.
The commission said employees who open more than one retirement savings account would encounter problems at the end of their work life.
PenCom’s Director General, Aisha Dahir-Umar, disclosed this at a one-day interactive session with the organised private sector on the current developments and challenges in the implementation of the Pension Reform Act 2014, held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital.
Dahir-Umar, who was represented by the commission’s Head, Compliance and Enforcement Department, Bala Babangida, said the interactive session was to remind people in the organised private sector of their responsibilities for complying with the Act.
She explained that pension is a personal issue and that employees are entitled to their pension administrator, saying employers don’t have the right to force a pension administrator on their employees,
The PenCom DG stated, “It is your own right. When an employer compels you to do so, please report to the National Pension Commission.
“You are not supposed to open more than one account, If you open more than one account, at the end of your work life, you will run into problems because perhaps we need to do reconciliation before you access your retirement savings account.”
She reminded employers of their responsibilities to open a retirement savings account for their employees, saying the idea is to ensure that every employee while retiring would now assess his retirement savings account as at when due.
Dahir-Umar said the commission was currently managing pension assets to the tune of N16.76 trillion, while the number of Retirement Savings Accounts holders under the Contributory Pension Scheme is over 10 million.
In his remarks, the Director General, National Employers Consultative Association, Mr Adewale-Smart Oyerinde, said NECA is an umbrella body of all labour employers in Nigeria with a membership of about 4,000.
Represented by the Chairman of NECA, Port Harcourt Geographical Group comprising Rivers and Bayelsa States, Godfrey Agorum, said the event was to educate people, saying, “There are many employers who do not have knowledge of this.
“They have people working for them and they are just on their own. If anything happens to them any day you will see these people lose out.
“When this scheme came, NECA came up supporting it, advocated for it so that provision is made that when the employees are on the job, there is something preserved for them. They make their own contributions from their salaries”.
