Ekiti to migrate civil servants to contributory pension scheme

The Ekiti State Government has sent a bill seeking to migrate its workforce to the contributory pension scheme from the current defined benefit scheme, which it said, constitutes a burden on the government.

The bill, tagged: “Pension Reform Law (First Amendment) Bill, 2024,” was approved during the State Executive Council (SEC) meeting held, yesterday, at the Government House and sent to the House of Assembly for legislative processing and subsequent passage into law.

The state’s Commissioner for Information and Value Orientation, Taiwo Olatunbosun, who disclosed this during a media briefing after the exco meeting, yesterday, said that the approval was to amend the State Pension Reform Law 2022 to expand the scope of the contributory pension scheme in the state.

He said: “The focus of the bill, when passed into law, is to migrate employees with over five years of service, currently under the Defined Benefit Scheme, to the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) to gradually reduce and eventually eradicate the gratuity liability and burden on the state government.

He said that those who have less than five years in the service would not be migrated because they have limited time to spend in the service, saying that they will remain on the current defined benefit scheme.

The commissioner further said that the contributory pension scheme would not only solve the issue of delayed payment of gratuities but also help the affected workers to choose their pension administrators who will manage the funds for them.