Pension Draft Bill Ready. Parliament is next(Front Page) June 5, 2008

Story: Michael Donkor
CABINET has approved the draft bill on the National Pension Reform Scheme.
The bill, which seeks to create a unified pension structure for the public sector to ensure retirement income security for Ghanaian workers, is to be submitted to Parliament for consideration.
If approved by Parliament, a contributory three-tier pension scheme, comprising two mandatory schemes and a voluntary scheme, will be introduced.
The first tier is a mandatory basic national social security scheme which will incorporate an improved system of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) benefits, compulsory for all employees in both the private and public sectors.
The second tier, which is a work-based pension scheme, will be mandatory for all employees but it will be privately managed. It is designed primarily to give contributors higher lump sum benefits than presently available under the SSNIT pension scheme.
The third tier will be a voluntary provident fund and personal pension supported by tax benefit incentives.
The Chairman of the Pension Reform Implementation Committee, Mr T. A. Bediako, announced this at the bi-annual joint steering committee meeting of the Ministry of Public Sector Reforms in Accra yesterday.
He said a Pensions Regulatory Authority had been proposed in the bill to oversee the administration and management of the three-tier pension scheme.
The authority, among other things, will register pension schemes and regulate the affairs and activities of trustees of registered schemes.
It will also supervise a modified SSNIT under a board of trustees to manage the basic national pension scheme to cater for the first tier of the scheme and advise the government on the overall policy on pension matters in Ghana.
For his part, the Minister of Public Sector Reforms, Mr Samuel Owusu-Agyei, said a Civil Service Bill had been forwarded to Cabinet for approval.
The bill is aimed at aligning the Civil Service with the provision in the Constitution in respect of the role of the Head of the Civil Service.
PNDC Law 327 gave the Head of the Civil Service the position of a Minister of State but that has been made ineffective with the promulgation of the 1992 Constitution.
The bill also proposes for chief directors to be called permanent secretaries, in compliance with the practice in Commonwealth countries, and better define their roles as permanent servants of the government and not directors of policy.
Mr Owusu-Agyei said the government remained committed to the implementation of recommended pay policies but added that it was mindful of its resource-base constraints, hence the need to move in phases to avoid over-running the national budget.
He said significant progress had been made in the delivery of training programmes specifically designed for the leadership of the Civil Service.