Parliament finally passes pension bill
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Parliament has passed the National Pensions (Amendment) Bill, 2021. The object of the bill is to exclude the Police Service, the Immigration Service, the Prisons Service, the security and intelligence agencies and the Ghana National Fire Service from the unification pensions.
The bill seeks to amend the National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766) to exclude the security services from the pension unification process envisaged under section 213 of Act 766.
If assented to by the President, the bill will exclude the security agencies from the unification of the process to pave the way for establishing a separate regime to govern pensions in the security and intelligence sector.
The bill was presented to Parliament and read for the first time on December 10, 2021, by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations.
The bill was referred to the Committee on Employment, Social Welfare and State Enterprises for consideration and report.
Observations
Per a report, the committee was informed that subsection (2) of section 213 of Act 766 mandated the board of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) to ensure the unification of all pension schemes and the full operationalisation of the three-tier pension scheme for all public sector workers, excluding the Ghana Armed Forces.
The committee noted that the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations established a Joint technical committee on the unification of pensions to develop the required technical instruments for the unification process.
The committee, the report said, noted that although officers in the Police Service, Immigration Service, National Fire Service, Prisons Service, and other security and intelligence agencies faced the same or similar risks just as their counterparts in the Ghana Armed Forces, they were not excluded from the pension unification process and were treated the same way as other public sector workers.
“The committee was informed that an attempt at the unification of pensions during the payment of lump-sum benefits to the first batch of retirees from the security services under Tier 2 of the Three-Tier Pension Scheme in 2020 was fraught with massive employee data verification challenges, which stalled the entire unification process.
“As a result of the challenges that emerged during the pension unification exercise and the unique nature of the security services in general, the Employment Ministry recommended excluding the security agencies from the unification process to pave the way for establishing a separate regime to govern pensions in the security and intelligence sector,” it said.
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