THE FLEXIBILITY OF THE PENSION REFORM ACT -Odunze Reginald C

In Accessing contributions before age 50 ,The Pension Reform Act in section 7 (2)  allows an individual who voluntarily retires, resigns or is disengaged from employment access to 25% of his or her retirement savings account (RSA) balance if he or she is unable to secure another job within a period of 4 months. This is a great contrast from what was obtainable under the PRA 2004 where only individuals who were involuntarily disengaged from employment were entitled to access 25% benefits after remaining unemployed for 6 months as in section 4 subsection 2 of the  Pension Reform Act 2004.

The problem then tend to compound when the contributor is force to resign as in banks, and other financial institutions, and other organizations who also employ such tactics in order not damage the career of the former staff who may be asked to go due to so many reasons, too numerous to mention.

At a time waivers was given to bank’s employee who resigned based on the advice of the employers but what happens to employees of other organization who have similar problems as at that time. Most of them felt frustrated that the law was discriminatory as one law ensures fair justice who matter whose ox is being gored. For the adherent of the equity of the law noted that in law not only justice must reign that people see to it that has justice has reigned.

I am not a lawyer, so the issue of justice and its administration should not and will never our subject of discussion, but our interest is that now the Pension Reform Act 2014 by the provisions of section 7 subsection 2 has come to alleviate such problems and also reduce the gestation time of such benefit application from 6 months to 4 months.

Finally it could be seen that the amendment of the PRA 2004 that gave rise to PRA 2014 has clearly pointed out the human nature in the enactment of law but another desire of contributors from interaction with them over a period of 7 years is the desire to increase the N 550, 000, one off payment when a contributor has to his credit an amount in his or her retirement of 550,000. Contributors are looking forward to raising the bar to N1million as they argue that the fallen of standard of living and the inflationary rate which stood at 2 digit figure has necessitated their desire for such .

reginaldodunze.blogspot.com