TRUSTFUND Pension has urged the National Pensions Commission (Pencom) to come down harder on firms that are not complying with the provisions of the Pension Reforms Act 2004.

The managing director of Trustfund Pensions Plc., Mrs. Helen Da-Souza, while speaking at the 10th anniversary lecture of Trustfund Pensions Plc., in Abuja, lamented non-remittance of pension contributions by employers particularly the private sector.

Her words: “We suggest that legal and punitive measures in line with the Pension Reform Act of 2004 be activated. A good number of employers have been running foul of the Act in terms of prompt and regular remittances of pension contributions in favour of their employees registered with PFAs. These customers are being shortchanged and denied their investment incomes that should have accrued to them had their pension deductions been remitted as at when due. On the other hand, some employers remit only the employees’ portion thereby creating loss of revenue to both their employees and the industry operators.”

The Trustfund boss also identified the non-compliance with nominal roll submission and Integrated Personnel Payroll Information System (IPPIS) by the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of the Federal Government as another stumbling block in the running of the contributory pension scheme.

She added: “Up till now, some MDAs are yet to complete the nominal roll template for employees while others started but abandoned the platform and joined IPPIS. Currently, there exist many funding gaps in the Retirement Saving Accounts (RSAs) of so many public sector employees due to the partial implementation of the nominal roll and IPPIS pension remittance platform. This situation has caused service dissatisfaction on the part of our customers, loss of revenue for the customers and PFAs., delays in processing of benefit payments and several reconciliation issues such as remittances that were supposed to have been made before migration to the IPPIS platform.”

Da-Souza also said the expansion of the scheme to the informal sector of the economy will further popularize the scheme amongst Nigerians.

In his intervention at the lecture, Commissioner, Inspectorate of Pencom, Prof Mohammed Abubakar, hinted that the Commission would soon open the transfer window, which will enable enrollees’ change their PFA whenever they wish to.

Prof Abubakar explained that the transfer window, which various stakeholders are clamouring for would be opened before the end of the first quarter of 2016.

He said: “I want to assure all the stakeholders here that the National Pension Commission would open the transfer window before the end of the first quarter of the 201them his will enable contributors change their PFA whenever thy want. We are also working to ensure that we increase surveillance responsibility so that we would be able to respond to events as they happen.”

Prof Abubakar also hinted that Pencom would also be extending the contributory pension scheme to the informal sector in order texts the window of coverage.