NSSF: Keep this government off our cash

A mother and child who live in Namuwongo B Zone, a slum near Kampala capital city. All photos by Edgar R. Batte.  

If successful in this scheme, God forbid, the government would compel the Fund to only release 30 per cent of one’s savings when due. The rest of your money would go into some form of pension scheme where one is paid a monthly pension.

The growth of savings at the National Social Security Fund is something for which nearly half a million private sector workers are very proud of.

The Funds management announced that their deposits and assets now stand at Shs3 trillion, a heady figure no doubt. This is another opportunity for workers to remind the government that they will vigorously oppose all plots to interfere in their affairs under the guise of the proposed retirement benefits law.

There are several unacceptable proposals in that planned law, the most devious of which is an intention to withhold a large percentage of the hard-earned savings of workers. If successful in this scheme, God forbid, the government would compel the Fund to only release 30 per cent of one’s savings when due. The rest of your money would go into some form of pension scheme where one is paid a monthly pension.

The backers of this arbitrary scheme have used the insulting and downright patronising argument that if private workers continue to receive their savings in lump sum, they will waste it and suffer in old age. How presumptuous! The government must be told in no uncertain terms that its interest in this matter should be limited to the law, which compels private sector workers to save because, unlike taxes, this is private money.

The owners of this money have every right to do as they please with it.

We live in an environment in which the citizens are terrified of the government. The government has become adept at perpetrating violence of various forms against the people. The same government has allowed the rabid theft of taxpayers’ money to go on almost unopposed. In fact, in quite a few cases the highest office in the land has been shameless in defending individuals believed to have robbed the country of billions of shillings. Meanwhile, it proceeds unbothered as our hospitals, among other key public infrastructure, rot away.

It is inconceivable then that the current administration can be so concerned about how private sector workers will get by in old age. If it was truly concerned, how is it that the same government continues to treat retired public servant pensioners so shabbily?