Workers who got injured at work, or those that suffered from work-related diseases also stood to benefit from the body entrusted with collecting premiums from workers and investing them wisely on their behalf.
But NSSA has turned out to be an antithesis of what it was meant to be.
After contributing to the authority for years, pensioners have to find other means to ensure a decent retirement on a measly US$40 monthly payout they get from NSSA.
Instead of providing a decent pension to contributors, the authority chooses to sink millions of dollars of hard-earned workers’ contributions in dubious investments.
NSSA was left exposed after the recent closure of two banks, Interfin and Genesis. This is bad news for the workers and pensioners who have no control over the body’s investment choices.
For the record, this is not the first time that NSSA has been exposed to troubled banks. When ReNaissance Merchant Bank was put under curatorship after shareholders had spirited away depositors’ funds, NSSA was left with a US$9 million exposure. Ordinarily, this should have been an eye-opening experience for the body.
However, reports show that the authority remains exposed to the tune of US$200 million to indigenous banks that are reeling from the effects of a liquidity crunch. This, clearly, is no good news for pensioners, some of them now poorer than church mice.
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While it is noble for NSSA to invest in the economy, its continued exposure to unstable institutions shows the body has gone off the rails. What NSSA is doing is akin to gambling with pensioners’ money and should be condemned in the strongest terms.
The authority’s investment policies need to be brought under public scrutiny for the benefit of the workers. Parliament can take the lead in scrutinising how NSSA conducts its business before workers lose more of their hard-earned dollars.
