The Nationwide Pension Fee (PenCom) has disclosed that newspaper organisations owe over ₦1.3 billion in unpaid pension contributions for journalists.

This was disclosed by Omolola Oloworaran, Director Basic of PenCom, who led a delegation to the Nigerian Press Council on Monday in Abuja. She expressed considerations over widespread non-compliance with the Pension Reform Act 2014 (PRA 2014) amongst media institutions.

Consequently, PenCom and the Nigerian Press Council have entered right into a strategic collaboration to prevail on newspaper organisations to settle the massive pension liabilities owed to their staff.

The fee in a press release additionally disclosed that the PRA 2014 mandates that employers remit month-to-month pension contributions into staff’ Retirement Financial savings Accounts (RSAS) no later than seven days after wage funds.

In accordance with the PenCom DG, many media homes have failed to stick to this requirement, prompting the Fee to assign Restoration Brokers to audit and decide their excellent pension money owed and relevant penalties.

“Just lately, the PenCom DG has been main an aggressive enforcement drive, constructing strategic partnerships with regulatory businesses aimed toward recovering unpaid pension contributions from organisations operating into billions of Naira. Nevertheless, the concentrate on the media sector is very important being the primary time of conducting such high-level engagements in the direction of resolving the lingering problem,”

Oloworaran mentioned journalists should retire with dignity as they play an important function in making certain accountability throughout the private and non-private sectors. Media organisations, in flip, should lead by instance by fulfilling pension obligations to their staff.

She appealed to the Nigerian Press Council for assist in advocating compliance throughout the media sector, emphasising that pension contributions are a important safeguard in opposition to previous age poverty. “Pension is an important element of our social safety system, and even the federal government has begun to take it extra significantly,” she added.

In response, Dili Ezughah, Govt Secretary of the Nigerian Press Council, pledged the Council’s assist and dedication to addressing the problem.

Ezughah mentioned the Nigerian Press Council would escalate the matter to related stakeholders, together with the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) and the Nigerian Guild of Editors.

Highlighting the numerous influence of unpaid pensions on journalists’ welfare. He decried the failure of media organisations to remit pension contributions as a big problem within the Nigerian media trade.

The each events agreed to the institution of a joint working group of PenCom and the Nigerian Press Council tasked with making certain a speedy decision of the problem.