UNESWA PENSION FUND IN E192M DEFICIT

MATSAPHA – It’s worse than they thought!

This is what is happening to the University of Eswatini (UNESWA) workers regarding the non-remittance of their deducted monies to financial institutions and other organisations like medical aid schemes, pension funds and life insurance policies. The National Workers Union in Swaziland Higher Institutions (NAWUSHI) President, Samuel Shongwe, informed their members that the UNESWA Pension Fund Board of Trustees had given them a report that by March 31, 2021, the fund  was operating with a deficit of E192 million. This transpired during the workers’ meeting held at the entrance/exit door of the UNESWA administration block at Kwaluseni Campus, where they discussed the matter of marching to the university Chancellor, His Majesty King Mswati III. The president added that since these figures were in a report of the 2020/21 financial year, which ended on March 31, 2021, the deficit could be higher now.

Benefits

On top of that, Shongwe said the fund was no longer able to pay terminal benefits and other packages of members who resign from work, retire or die. He said the Board informed them that in order to be able to pay the packages, they had to disinvest from some of the fund’s investments. This publication reliably gathered that the fund has investments in the Kingdom of Eswatini and in South Africa and that over the past two years, it had disinvested about E50 million to pay packages of members who resigned from work, retired or passed on. It was also reliably gathered that this affected about 955 members, which include approximately 680 active members and 275 pensioners.

When the president was addressing the workers, he said they needed to fight this matter tooth and nail because if they failed to do so, they might go home empty-handed when they retired, resigned or their beneficiaries could get nothing if they died. He said this was because the fund was having a deficit of E192 million and was disinvesting, which meant that sooner or later, there could be no investment to disinvest from.

Thereafter, the workers said they want the university to sanction the bursar’s office because the stop order letter they submitted to it was clear that it should deduct so much and remit it to which organisation. “However, the bursar’s office decides to deduct the money and use it to pay operational costs of the university, to like utility bills, among other things,” the workers said. On the same note, an impeccable source within the fund said even though the non-remittance of monies to the fund by the university contributed immensely to the deficit, there could be other factors which could be contributors.

The insider also highlighted that following the challenges, the Board of the fund met with the pensioners and active members separately. UNESWA Pension Fund Acting Principal Officer (PO) Ntokozo Mazibuko confirmed the latest developments. He mentioned that indeed things were not going well in the fund. However, he said for the past eight months or so, the university had been trying to pay monthly contributions for its workers to the fund. “But, I should state that still, the institution is behind with many months as the contributions received by the fund last month (February 2022), were for November 2020,” the acting PO said.

Pensioners

He said while this was happening, the fund was also expected to increase monthly pay for the about 275 current pensioners. It is worth noting that the workers, through their union, NAWUSHI, have petitioned the university several times about the matter of non-remittance of monies deducted from their salaries, but there had been no positive feedback. As such, in November 2020, they reported the matter, among others to Parliament, through a petition.

Due to the non-remittance of their deducted monies to financial institutions, the workers said this prevented them from getting loans and they were being charged interest on arrears.
Again, they said such a situation had resulted in huge financial and emotional stress for the workers. They also said they were further denied their basic human right of accessing health facilities by the non-remittance of stop orders to medical aid schemes. They added that what they were told was that the university was failing to remit the monies because it had cash flow challenges and government usually gave it a subvention of E350 million, yet its budget was around E900 million. As such, they said they asked Parliament to increase the budget allocation for the university to meet its obligations.

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