Grey Power Commentary

Grey Power continues to be surprised at the number of FNPF advertisements appearing in the daily newspapers. Presumably these are paid advertisements, though the Saturday August 27^th full page colour spread does not say ‘paid advertisement’ at the top of the page like the others did- this one could have been printed with the compliments of the Fiji Times, perhaps?

In any event, the contents of the August 27^th advertisement are yet another example of the blinkered vision of the FNPF Trust and management. The complicated and verbiose text in the advertisement serves to further confuse the issues for the readers and, no doubt, is an expression of the confusion that reigns within the FNPF on how to resolve the pension scheme hot potato it finds itself suddenly holding.

One thing that strikes Grey Power is the guilt trip that FNPF in its advertisements continues to push the pensioners to go on, eg ‘Pensioners’ benefits are being subsidized by the current members’, and ‘so who should pay?’ (for the current benefits we guess this means)- the‘pensioners’ or the ‘current members’?

The choices FNPF gives are only two –  pensions can be paid by the pensioners themselves ( by accepting cuts) or by the current members subsidizing. But what if there are other choices? David Burness affidavits have been filed in court and served to FNPF and Government- perhaps the FNPF management should take the trouble to read about other options proposed. And to use their imagination, for a change.

Grey Power has the following questions for the FNPF and Government:

Question 1: how can reducing 1100 pensions (most in the 75 plus age group) help FNPF get out of the mess it created for itself? About 89% (below $800 pm) of the pensions will not now be touched as FNPF said in a previous advertisement. Surely FNPF cannot be saved merely by reducing the 1100 remaining pensions?

Question 2: what happened to the investments? How come they did not return what they could have done? We want the books opened please, as beneficiaries are entitled to ask.

Question 3: To FNPF’s question in its advertisement: ‘Who should pay?’, the answer lies within: FNPF and the Government should pay i.e. those who made the decision to lie to the pensioners, take their contributions and invest them badly at the time the contributions were still functional, and not give them any information about their own savings and what FNPF was doing with them when there is no Parliament (where these things could have been debated), and after 2009 when the Constitution, which protected older persons’ human rights, was abrogated leaving them with no recourse whatsoever to obtain information and express their opinion on their own pensions. The poor quality FNPF presentations made around the country do not count as ‘consultations’ and was hardly democratic as FNPF would like to claim. The FNPF management team did not even know how to answer questions from the floor and ignored most of them. In some instances the team’s presentations relied on handwritten graphs.

Last question: Are we ( FNPF beneficiaries and members) paying the salaries of such incompetents in the FNPF management team?  The quality of the relentless series of advertisements shows they may not even be qualified to hold these management posts. 

To see an illustration of the FNPF advertisement, click Continue Reading >

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We encourage comments on our publications, the following are some of last week’s comments:

Cutting the pensions of a few hundred pensioners is not the long term answer to the woes of the FNPF. It is a short term, knee jerk reaction by a board and management team who are incapable of planning for the future.

Of course the FNPF needs restructuring and there are a great many factors to be taken into consideration for future retirees.
Future pensions should have basic medical benefits and should be cost of living indexed. This is within the abilities of the fund if it is properly structured and not run by greedy incompetents.
Why should people who have worked all their lives, be cast off by the society which they contributed to, that would be a criminal act by the society they live in.
The current FNPF management is acting like a pack of wild dogs, that drive off the weak and sick from their pack because they are no longer fit for hunting.
What the FNPF needs at this time is people of vision, not a pack of dogs howling and snarling.
CASSANDRA 

On FT Letters
I read the letter as well and am convinced that it was written by some ball polisher from FNPF. As for the Fiji Times, everyone knows that some journalists seems to have a soft spot for Taito. I remember that during Taito’s charade in the name of submissions, a Fiji Times journalists heaped him with praises for being calm despite all criticisms. She forgot to think outside the box and reason that Taito was calm as he had no answer to give for all the misappropriations. This same journalists if I recall claimed for maintenance payment from Taito’s father -in law for a child while he was ruling Fiji after dooming this country into the coup culture. As for Ms. Fatu, she is a selfish lady who is very unchristian as she doesn’t care about the effects that the reduction in pension will have on the pensioners. For her, 11% is just a number. She doesn’t feel the pain of others. She should consult her bible again especially the part where its spelled out that “do unto others what you want done to you….”. She says that we should save the ship before it sinks. FYI Ms. Fatu, the problem is not the ship but the pilot, engineers and the crews. You need to save the ship from them and not the poor pensioners who did no wrong to deserve such cruel treatment. The pensioners did not make senseless decisions that resulted in the loss of 330 million. The pensioners did not tell FNPF to invest in the Momi project which is now rotting away. The pensioners had no hand in FNPF recruiting experts and expensive management companies to manage the Natadola and Momi projects. And last but not the least, the pensioners had no hand in allowing buffet lunches for staffs and families of the hotel and golf course in Natadola and interest free loans to ex-GM and his deputy (who by the way has done a runner to NZ). The pensioners also had no hand in wasting FNPF’s money on staff training as a result of recruitment of unworthy staff on whom you know basis. So why punish the pensioners.
JOHNNY YEE 

Good on you, Johnny. That is exactly right. Have you noticed that FNPF is on a back foot lately? It stubbornly wants not to lose face by not backtracking from its proposal so its advertisements are becoming something of a broken down record; and incoherent also. I think the boys at the helm (not a single woman on Board) are uneducated, ill-informed carpetbaggers. Did you know that Ajith Kodagoda the FNPF chairman has also 2 other jobs (3 if you count his job with CJ Patel- what do they want out of this I wonder); Kodagoda is head of ATH (ah ha- didn’t they take money from FNPF?) ; and wait for it- FIRCA. What, you say? I do too.

Pensioners have every right to ask the President for a Commission of Inquiry.
La Passionara

Fijipensioners Grey Power thought that pensioners of Fiji would be interested to read the recently published article written by Trish Power on what a comfortable retirement  would mean if we were living in Australia.

The lifestyle choices of pensioners in Australia may be different from pensioners of Fiji but the basic needs that pensioners have to meet in both countries are the same- we still have to pay for all the essentials of life after retirement.

Most people before they retire (usually about 10-15 years beforehand) start looking at their likely costs after retiring and plan accordingly. Many pay off their mortgages or other debts at an accelerated rate and do other things to start putting their retirement plans into effect after calculating what they will get as retirement income (in our case FNPF income).

By proposing to cut the pensions of people already retired the FNPF and Government will plunge the elderly people of our country into a crisis which, at their age in life, they cannot be expected to handle. The FNPF pension is not inflation adjusted and therefore already pensioners face annual diminishing returns on their original pension amounts. 

Grey Power
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—By Kevin Drum

Via Paul Krugman,Dean Baker has a paper out today that explains why state pension funds are in trouble: It’s the recession, stupid. The entire shortfall can be attributed to stock market losses and underfunding in just the past four years:

Figure 1 projects pension fund assets if pensions had continued to earn on average a 4.5 percent nominal rate of return in the period since the end of 2007. Under this  assumption, state and local pension fund assets would have been $857 billion higher at the end of the third quarter of 2010.
…. In the period since the beginning of the recession, annual payments into state and local pension funds have averaged $6.9 billion less than withdrawals. By contrast, in the three years prior to the downturn, payments averaged $18.4 billion more than withdrawals. If state and local governments had continued to contribute to their pensions at the same rate as they had in the prior three years, then the total assets of these funds would be $77 billion higher than was reported at the end of the third quarter of 2010. Adding this to the $857 billion figure above results in an additional $934 billion in pension funds, a figure far higher than most estimates of the size of state and local government shortfalls.

On Thursday we drew peoples attention to the fact that the Fiji Times had published a letter from an admirer of FNPF management, when they had to date declined to publish letters from pensioners.

It is possible that the FT editor has had a change of heart since a letter that did not endorse FNPF actions was published in Fridays columns of the Fiji Times and another today, Saturday 27 August.

It the interest of fairness, and for those of you who may have not seen the letters we copy them here:
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ISLAMABAD –  The Human Rights Association of Pakistan on Wednesday submitted a writ petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) seeking the resolution of the problems faced by retired people in obtaining pension. Human Rights Association President M Kowkab Iqbal argued in the petition that the financial support to the needy was being provided under the Benazir Income Support Programme at their doorsteps, but the people who had served the country for a considerable period of their life had to stand in queues for long hours to receive their pension.
“They are old people and the government should not dishonour them by making them wait in long queues outside banks and other relevant places, which is a violation of Article 9 of the constitution,” she contended. Making the government of Pakistan a respondent, the petitioner asked the court to take notice of the issue. The court accepted the writ petition for a regular hearing to be held on the coming Friday.

“Grey Power was searching for similar cases to Fiji and our FNPF predicament and came across this item about Nigerian pensioners in 2006. Grey Power thinks that clearly others have been where fijipensioners are now. We thought our readers and supporters would be interested in this story from Nigeria”.
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A guy who lives at Lake Saint Marys

if you hadn’t seen the following pictures:
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