Pensioners fight for early access to death gratuity

Africa-Press – Malawi. Retired civil ser­vants have called on the gov­ern­ment to allow them to access one third of their death gra­tu­ity while still alive.

The request was made yes­ter­day, at the Pub­lic Ser­vice Pen­sion­ers Asso­ci­ation (Pusepa) annual gen­eral meet­ing (AGM), adding a new dimen­sion to ongo­ing debates on pen­sion reforms and the wel­fare of retired pub­lic ser­vants.

The meet­ing in Lilongwe insisted that access­ing part of the death gra­tu­ity in advance would bet­ter address imme­di­ate needs rather than leav­ing the funds unused until death.

Speak­ing on behalf of the pen­sion­ers, Steven Ngwira said many retired civil ser­vants no longer have bene­fi­ciar­ies who would bene­fit from the gra­tu­ity.

Accord­ing to Ngwira, most pen­sion­ers are eld­erly and that their chil­dren are grown and fin­an­cially inde­pend­ent.

He said releas­ing part of the gra­tu­ity while pen­sion­ers are alive would allow them to put the money to pro­duct­ive use and that it would help meet press­ing needs, includ­ing health­care, hous­ing improve­ments or small invest­ments, improv­ing their qual­ity of life in later years.

“Pen­sion­ers across the coun­try are eager to hear about the one-third death gra­tu­ity being nego­ti­ated by Pusepa man­age­ment so that they receive part of their gra­tu­ity before they die,” Ngwira said.

Pusepa pres­id­ent Gen­esis Mali­jana and mem­ber Que­man Kabiya also sup­por­ted the pro­posal, say­ing it would help pen­sion­ers cope in a highly infla­tion­ary envir­on­ment.

Depart­ment of Account­ant Gen­eral Chief Account­ant Andrew Mtonga reit­er­ated that the law cur­rently does not allow pay­ment of death gra­tu­ity to the owner while alive.

“A trans­ferred pen­sion refers to a five-year monthly pen­sion bene­fit pay­able to the depend­ents of a deceased pen­sioner.

“This bene­fit becomes pay­able only upon the pen­sioner’s death and there are cur­rently no pro­ced­ures allow­ing pen­sion­ers to access these funds dur­ing their life­time,” Mtonga said.

He added that the gov­ern­ment is explor­ing the pos­sib­il­ity of such access in the future, sub­ject to con­sulta­tions with rel­ev­ant stake­hold­ers.

“It has been noted that most pen­sion­ers have no depend­ents; as such, they argue that access to these funds would help address some of the chal­lenges they are facing,” Mtonga said.

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