AS the Labour sector and the nation at large get set for the battle to implement the recently-approved National Minimum Wage, the complementary Labour compensation law – the Pension Act – needs to be placed on the centre stage of the total fiscal plan, especially at the state and local government levels.
The Labour compensation law in question is the Contributory Pension Scheme, CPS. By the CPS Act as amended in 2014, the Federal Government had kick-started the implementation for federal civil servants while the private sector has largely keyed into the scheme.
It is worrisome that after many years, the National Pension Commission, PENCOM, is reporting that only 15 states have made progress in the implementation of the scheme, while only eight out of the remaining 21 states have sent bills for its enactment.
A breakdown of the level of implementation of the CPS as contained in a PENCOM report for the first quarter of 2019 shows that 20 states are neither remitting pension…
