The Efficacy of Pension Administrative Reforms on Retirees’ Benefits in Tanzania: The Case of Ilala District

Paul Mtasigazya¹

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Journal-Paper
Vol.12 , Issue.3 , pp.71-83, Sep-2024

Online published on Sep 30, 2024

Copyright © Paul Mtasigazya . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
This paper investigated the efficacy of pension administration to the pensioners in Tanzania. In many Countries in Africa, including Tanzania, there is a tremendous increase of pension schemes that cover public and private sectors’ employees. The pension schemes in Tanzania have undergone legal and institutional reforms for the purpose of increasing efficacy i.e on the coverage and benefits to their members. Despite these reforms, there is a paucity of knowledge as to whether the reforms have turned into tangible benefits and minimized administrative challenges that hamper the efficiency and effective administration of the retirement benefits. This study is more significant because pension schemes are relevant for social economic well-being of retirees in any country such as Tanzania. This paper was guided by the following research objectives: i.to explore the satisfaction of pensioners with pension administration system in Tanzania, ii.to examine the effect of pension administrative reforms on the coverage of pension in Tanzania iii.to explore the accountability on pension administration system in Tanzania (i.e timely payment of pensions and calculation of pension) and to investigate the challenges facing pension administrative process in Tanzania. This study used a case study research design and data were collected from 64 respondents through interviews and documentary review. The findings indicate that there is a low coverage of pension schemes, delay in payment of the pension benefits of the retirees. Furthermore, there were institutional design and governance challenges facing pension schemes in Tanzania. This paper concludes that there is a need to reform and restructure pension institutions and change the working culture and altitudes of the pension administrators in Tanzania so as to mitigate challenges underscored in this study. The PSSSF and NSSF should review the processing of terminal benefits of retirees’ workflow. This includes regular review of a Client Service Charter which can incorporate all core activities and the whole process of terminal benefits indicating exact time a certain activity is going to be initiated and completed and identify who will be accountable for what. Client service charter will do away with delay of pension benefits. Based on the findings of this study, it is recommended that mitigating the challenges facing pension administration would result into increasing work commitment, timely provision of pension benefits across all pension institutions in order to improve good standard of living to the retirees.

Key-Words / Index Term :
Efficacy, Pension Administrative reforms, Retirees Pension Benefits

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