Employees must be represented in the management of their own provident fund, Harsha says
View(s):While calling for drastic reforms in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF), UNP Parliamentarian and economist Harsha de Silva has urged the need for representatives of employees to be involved in the management of the fund.
“The time has come for drastic reform in the way the EPF is managed to ensure that the pension fund is managed properly and the agent becomes accountable to its principals, “De Silva, also the party’s Economic Affairs spokesperson said in a statement.
He pointed out the “urgent need for at least two to three employee representatives to be appointed to the investment committee of the EPF so that the fund will be safeguarded until the reforms are undertaken. The millions of private sector employees who contribute part of their earnings every month so that they could retire in peace must ask for this to be done immediately”.
De Silva, who has consistently over the years campaigned for more transparency and a better governance structure in the EPF which he says has been misused by the government, noted that it is a national tragedy that the EPF has still not submitted to Parliament its audited accounts for the year 2011 as required by law.
This is notwithstanding the ‘cynical press releases’ by the Central Bank ‘warning’ the public not to be misled by ‘certain politicians’ who have been repeatedly alleging that the audited accounts of the EPF have not been submitted since 2010, he said:
“The people of this country must know the truth. And the unpalatable truth is that those who are waxing eloquent about their various achievements in economic governance have failed miserably in their duty to submit the audited accounts of the Rs 1.3 trillion pension fund of the 2.5 million people employed in the private sector for the last two and a half years. Who is responsible for this inexcusable state of affairs? Where will the buck stop?
Currently, this trillion-rupee plus fund is managed exclusively by a unit at the Central Bank. It is no secret that many allegations have been made on massive stock market manipulation rackets involving the EPF and certain white collar criminals. Known as pump-and-dump scams these criminals have sold shares at highly inflated prices to the EPF to become billionaires; in the process making the EPF lose billions. Most of these rackets took place between 2010 and 2012.
However, no action was taken by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on any of the alleged fraudulent transactions. Even though it was said that a number of investigations were underway at the time the second chairperson of the SEC left on ethical grounds none of the said investigations found anyone of any wrong doing, save a couple of small time brokers who were warned and let go.
In an unbelievable turn of events, even the head of the investment committee of the EPF joined the board of the person with perhaps the most number of allegations of white collar crime; the same person who was the ultimate head of the stockbroking firm that fraudulently pumped the price of The Finance Company shares and dumped them on NSB. These frauds not only happened in the stock market, it happened in the bond market as well where insider information was the ‘name of the game’.”