Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE government has directed social security funds and financial institutions to scrutinise their systems in order to unearth root causes of pension’s scams and fraud.
Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office (Policy, Parliamentary Affairs, Labour, Youth, Employment and Persons with Disability), Ms Jenista Mhagama, issued the directive yesterday in Dar es Salaam, during a seminar for prospective Public Service Social Security Fund (PSSSF) retirees for 2021/2022 and 2022/2023.
“Scammers try to persuade pensioners to transfer their entire pension savings, or to release funds from it…to the extent that they make to them promises they can not fulfill. Sometimes they promise pensioners early access to their pension,” she said.
She said the scammers introduce themselves as employees of a pension fund or bank and claim to be dealing with benefits of retirees after gathering enough information about them, adding that this must stop.
Equally, the minister said it was time the pension funds collaborated with relevant authorities to investigate and guard the system storing crucial information of the members.
“The government is doing everything possible to protect retirees, so we will follow up this matter from their (retirees) offices, pension funds and banks, because it is possible that some unscrupulous employees are colluding with these scammers,” she pointed out.
Elaborating, she said some victims of pension scam have been reported to have been receiving cold-calls, offers of free pension reviews and promises that they would get high rates of return – all of which are key warning signs of scams. “Some use online models, make contact through social media or will use friends and family to reach clusters of people. Others will rely on established practices offering a free pensions review,” she said.
In details, Ms Mhagama told prospective retirees that it was not the norm for a pension fund or bank to claim any kind of payment from a retiree in order to pay him his pension or file transfer, adding that no stamp duty or fees is required here.
She said the victims have lost millions of money to fraudsters, while also using the platform to urge the prospective pensioners to be vigilant in order to spot and avoid a scam.
“You should try to practice getting information from reliable sources and it’s so important that you become vigilant, not just get an offer about your pension out of the blue…try to check and know the person you are dealing with,” she said.
On his part, PSSSF Director-General, Mr Hosea Kashimba said there have been several challenges retirees face, especially the best and most efficient way to use pensions after retirement.
For that matter, they started the seminars for them in July this year where 2,950 participants attended in Dodoma, Mwanza, Mbeya, Tanga, Arusha, Ruvuma, Mtwara, Morogoro, Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam regions.
As of June 2021, he said 705,484 PSSSF members, who are employees of companies, where the State owns 30 per cent stake as well as some civil servants attended.
In addition, the fund served 188,330 retirees and dependents. “From the start of the fund 1 August 2018 to June 30, 2021, the fund has paid 143,367 beneficiaries totaling 5073bn / – and in July this year the fund paid 145,419 monthly pension beneficiaries of 56.11bn / -,” he said.
Commenting, a representative of the prospective retirees, Mr Hussein Masoud called for the seminars to be sustainable, saying many do not have adequate financial management education and skills to run projects. “We do not know the best ways to reach investment decisions and which are the safest projects,” he added.
The seminar was prepared in collaboration with stakeholders from banks such as NMB, NBC, CRBD, DCB, Azania Bank, ABC Bank and Mwalimu Commercial Bank (MCBOthers were the Prevention and Combating of Corruption Bureau (PCCB), Small Industries Development Organisation (SIDO), Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) and UTT AMIS Fund.
Various topics including retirement preparation, retirement life, investment education, entrepreneurship and avoiding pension scams were shared during the two days seminar.
