Having given evidence in February 2023 to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee (PPC) on Budget, Finance and Economic Development, on why Zisco Pension Fund pensioners are not getting their pensions seven years after they became due, the portfolio committee through its clerk reports that the report to be presented to the national assembly is being finalised.
The portfolio committee also added that the Zimbabwe Pensions and Insurance Rights Trust (ZimPIRT) will not have sight to the report when other parties that gave evidence to the Committee had sight of the report.
First Mutual Life, Insurance and Pension Commission (IPEC) and the board of trustees gave evidence as parties that have failed to honour pensions due to the Zisco pensioners for the past seven years, while ZimPIRT gave evidence as a representative of the Zisco pensioners seeking their due pensions.
The committee update that the report is almost final, ZimPIRT having been denied this report is a play by the Committee report-writing clerical staff, of what transpired when the prejudicial Pensions and Provident Funds Act was passed behind pensioners’ backs, taking full advantage of the lack of full understanding within the committee of pension operations. In these circumstances ZimPIRT naturally sought to lobby with the portfolio committee MPs, the main question being “Is Zisco pensioner parliament petition about to be hi-jacked again”.
The discussions with the MPs showed that there’s no full comprehension among MPs of how pensions operate as dictated by the Pension and Provident Funds Act. In these circumstances, MPs easily get swayed by things considered to be the ‘establishment’, even if the so-called establishment has sinister intentions to the pensioners. It is incidentally the same with the judiciary where insurance companies are applying all their resources to mislead the Courts against poorly resourced pensioners and insurance policyholders.
By some mishap and/or perchance ZimPIRT had a glimpse of this so-called final report by the portfolio committee clerical staff.
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All key evidence submitted by ZimPIRT to the portfolio committee in February, has been omitted from the report, with most of the material in this report being wholly manufactured, being pitched against provisions of the Act and with the objective of exonerating Ipec, First Mutual and the pensioner unrepresentative Zisco Steel Pension Fund board of trustees.
What is worse, the so-called final report recommends that First Mutual, IPEC and the unrepresentative board of trustees ‘calculate and pay Zisco pensioner benefits in 90 days’.
As already highlighted, this is in circumstances when First Mutual, Ipec and the unrepresentative board of trustees have refused and failed to honour these pensioner benefits for seven (7) years now, and the 90 days being calculated to delay actioning of pension payments, until this parliament is dissolved to make way for a new parliament after the August 2023 elections, when the pensioners will have to start all over again with the same failed First Mutual, Ipec and unrepresentative board of trustees.
What is more astounding is that this portfolio committee parliamentary report is written in a style very similar to some Ipec publications by some identifiable Ipec personnel. It has for instance all the hallmarks of an Ipec-written parliamentary report.
The situation when the parliamentary clerk to this portfolio committee has refused ZimPIRT this report when it is apparent that all other parties that provided evidence to this committee had sight of the report, tells how this parliamentary process has been captured by Ipec, First Mutual and the unrepresentative Zisco board of trustees.
In all probability this parliamentary process has been hi jacked and corrupted, thereby paralysing not only a democratic parliamentary process by which pensioners get restitution, but the entire pension governance processes as dictated by the Act.
It is indeed a repetition of what transpired with the same portfolio committee report-writing when the national assembly passed a prejudicial Pension and Provident Funds Act.
Ipec, First Mutual and the unrepresentative board of trustees have failed for the past seven years, and in good governance, must not ever be party to proceedings to recover Ziscosteel pensioner pension benefits, and parliamentary process of report writing must be investigated
- Tarusenga is the general manager of Zimbabwe Pensions & Insurance Rights — martin@zimpirt.org; +263 (0)772 889 716. Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not represent those of the organisations that the author represents.