K55mil Kokopo deal queried

MORE than 900 Nasfund contributors and members of the National Airline Employees Association (Naea) are calling for an immediate investigation into the alleged siphoning of K125 million to a treasury bill for infrastructure projects.
General secretary of Naea Emmanuel Pilai has called on the management of Nasfund to publicly tell contributing members why a massive K125 million has been pumped into a sovereign community infrastructure treasury bill and what benefits would be derived from this agreement.
He said Nasfund should also explain how it would recoup the K55 million from the K125 million paid out to a company for a project in Kokopo.
Pilai said while the association was overwhelmed to learn of the remarkable statistics of annualised growth in both the fund (26%) and membership (9.5%), this achievement might be short-lived.
He said history had shown that with growth in any public fund, there was a tendency towards manipulation by the powers that be, “and the least is we do not want history to repeat itself”.
“The board and management of Nasfund must be mindful as they are the only custodians of the workers’ funds and any action or decision they enter into must always have the interests of these contributing members at heart.
“This will be in harmony with Nasfund’s core responsibility of delivering quality service to members and growing members’ wealth through prudent investment,” he said.
Pilai said the members of the airline association were bourgeois; hence their hard-earned savings to Nasfund must be protected and invested well to ensure maximum benefits were derived through sound investments.