Arusha Regional Commissioner, Felix Ntibenda
Ntibenda made the call at the weekend at a forum which involved
human resource officers from Arusha, Kilimanjaro and Manyara regions.
The forum was meant to empower the officers on the functions of the
pension schemes in the country.
The RC said it was high time for the pension funds to explore the
opportunities available in the informal sector, which are yet to be
tapped.
“There are many people out there who are not accessed with pension
schemes. And they are ready to contribute,” the RC told the gathering.
He also suggested the need for Tanzanians to cultivate a culture of
joining the pension funds because of their potential benefits.
According to Ntibenda, pension funds offer a wide-range of
benefits and sometimes they address the problems of poverty and those
associated with retirement.
“Today retirement is seen as the most frustrating, frightening and
undesirable stage of one’s life and hence the need to embrace all the
country’s workforce remain important,” he said, adding: “This is because
of the high level of unpreparedness on the part of retiring workers and
their employers.”
“Sufferings and poverty associated with retirement were not
peculiar to public sector retirees but also those in the private sector,
informal sector workers and the self employed suffered the same fate,”
the regional chief told human resources’ managers, who are responsible
to make sure that employees’ monthly contributions were settled in time
to the pension funds.
Official of the Government Employees Provident Fund (GEPF), Aloyce
Ntukamazina said his fund has a total of 80,000 members, whereby 35,000
members come from voluntary schemes.
“We have started working on the RC proposal and very soon we’re
going to introduce new scheme for education, whereby we’ll be providing
loans for students and children of our members.”
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