ESAMI to offer Social Security Post Graduate Certificate soon

By Edward Selasini

Plans are underway to establish a post graduate certificate course for social security recruited staff for organizations dealing with social security member schemes at East and Southern Africa Management Institute (ESAMI) in collaboration with The East and Central Africa Social Security Association (ECASSA).

This was said by Mr. Gaperi K. Henry who is the chairperson of ECASSA and he is also Director General for Social Security Fund of Rwanda at a five day ECASSA/ESAMI Training of Trainers Course for Member Schemes Managers when he officially opened the course on 10 March, 2008 at ESAMI.

He said indeed an important milestone because by undertaking the Training of Trainers Course, ECASSA is fulfilling one of its key objectives which is ‘to facilitate the promotion of social security awareness and training in the sub-region'.

He went on saying that on March 31, 2007, the governments of Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda approved a statute and constitution to establish the East and Central African Social Security Association (ECASSA) with 15 founding member organizations from the entire East Africa Community Region.

"The challenge before us is to make life easier for citizens of member states seeking employment in neighboring states to be guaranteed of adequate social protection coverage" said Mr. Gaperi.

Senior officials from the five governments met in January 2007 to propose ECASSA. Soon thereafter, work began on drafting the statute and constitution. The purpose of ECASSA is to provide a strong international voice for the pension systems in these five countries.

The five member countries envision ECASSA as an institutional forum for the exchange of ideas to improve their pension plans. Additionally, the governments will use ECASSA to facilitate portability of retirement benefits and provide a platform for greater cooperation on social security among the five countries.
Together, member countries have a population of more than 100 million: 2.6 million are aged 65 or older, and about 66 million are between the ages of 15 and 64.
The retirement systems of all five countries are funded by contributions from employees based on gross monthly earnings and from employers based on gross monthly payroll. Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania each have social insurance retirement benefit systems that provide monthly pension benefits at retirement.

Kenya and Uganda have provident fund systems that, upon retirement, pay a lump sum equal to total contributions and interest accrued rather than a monthly pension. These countries' provident funds also allow for pre retirement distributions, generally for significant life events such as the purchase of a house, medical expenses, and education expenses.

The Training of Trainers Course came about because when ECASSA begun interacting more closely in various regional and international forums, they realized that although the management of social protection services was becoming increasingly sophisticated with each passing day, there schemes did not have structured systems for parting staff with basic principles of social protection and pensions administration.

Members of staff have been left to learn the intricacies of social protection concept through on-the-job training and is a very haphazard way of training staff who have to perform in such a highly competitive business environment.