Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja
Trustfund Pensions Limited has commenced the sensitisation of employers on Employee Data Recapture (EDR) exercise, in line with the recent directive of the National Pension Commission (PenCom) for workers under the Contributory Pension Scheme.
The EDR is an exercise designed for each registered contributor with any PFA to have their data recaptured as PenCom migrates from the platform initially being used to warehouse a contributor’s data, known as Contributor Registration System (CRS), to Enhanced Contributor Registration System (ECRS).
Speaking on the sidelines of the annual employers’ forum, organised by Trustfund Pensions in collaboration with Zenith Pension Fund Custodian, the Regional Manager, North-Central, Trustfund Pensions Ltd., Mrs. Emusiri Oshodi, said in the last six months, PenCom has come on strongly with the EDR exercise.
“The federal government has directed that the National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) should be the identity manager for everybody in Nigeria. So, everything we are doing currently in the country has to be synced with the NIMC database. Now, our contributors’ data also have to be synced with what they have with NIMC.
“That’s what this exercise is currently all about so that at every point in time, you have people with unique data, and you have people with unique identification. It’s not like in the past where one person would answer three, four names or one person could have seven dates of birth.
“Now, we are going to be having a unique identification–unique data tied to everybody in this country. That’s what it is,” she explained.
She said one of the challenges facing the exercise, which was initially projected to end on January 31,2019, was the absence of a directive or penalty to make it compulsory for all RSA holders to comply unlike the Bank Verification Number in the banking sector where defaulting bank customers had their accounts frozen.
“The good thing is that people already know that they submitted, do I say, several data tied to themselves. Some people at their places of work have a certain date as their date of birth. When they filled their RSA with us, they gave another set of information as their date of birth.
“Such people, naturally are people that are not willing to be tied to a particular set of data.
“They are not going to come. They want to wait till a penalty is rolled out. The exercise is supposed to be time-bound.
“This exercise was supposed to have terminated by January 31, 2019, but so many people did not come out for it and that’s why the regulator (PenCom) has encouraged us to start afresh.”
Also in an interview, the Chief Compliance Officer, Trustfund Pensions, Mr. Christopher Fakanlu, who spoke about employers’ obligations under the Pension Reforms Act 2014, said an employer who fails to deduct or remit the contributions within the stipulated timeline of seven working days from the day salary is paid is in breach of Section 11(3) of the Act as stated in Section 11(6).
