Super funds’ profits, a Sir Mekere legacy

IT was a double-dose of good luck when PNG’s biggest super funds announced windfall gains for long-suffering workers in both the public and private sectors.
Over the weekend, the 228,319 members of Nambawan Super Limited had their account balances increased by 7 per cent.
Despite a bad year in 2022, Nambawan Super realised a net profit after tax of K659 million, a leap in the 2022 profit of K144 million.
Earlier this month, the National Superannuation Fund approved 9 per cent to be added to its 680,000-odd members’ accounts.
This is super good news for ordinary workers in both the private and public sectors.
It is also not the best of economic times in the country so the managements of both super funds have done very well to deliver these bonanzas.
But perhaps it can also be said that unlike other businesses which have to trade through an economic slump, the funds are almost like the tax office. They collect a certain amount stipulated under the law from each worker every payday and a corresponding amount from the employer for the employee as well.
Obviously, the funds have to be well-managed so that the people’s life savings are not squandered.
There was a time not-too-long ago when contributors of Nasfund had to have their savings written down by as much as 25 per cent because the board and management had mismanaged the fund.
Realising the dangers apparent, Prime Minister at the time Sir Mekere Morauta changed and strengthened the laws guarding the funds and other institutions such as the Central Bank, giving them financial independence and protecting them from the greedy hands of politicians.
It is thanks to Sir Mekere that the funds are doing so well today. There is many a millionaire today who has been made by this Kukipi village man who grew up on the beach where the Lakekamu and Tauri rivers reach the sea in the Gulf of Papua. He has now gone to his Maker all these three years past, God rest his soul.
But Sir Mekere lives on in the strength that he breathed into the institutions of State such as Nambawan Super Ltd and the National Superannuation Fund.
The legal fortifications he put around them remained in place and all workers must be thankful and must protect them at all costs.
Those that he surrounded the Central Bank with have all been dismantled and changed with the plausible effect that some of PNG’s economic woes might have their genesis there.
What politician who today brings legislation before Parliament does so because he knows what protection or good it will bring to the citizens of this country in future as did Sir Mekere?
Who are these politicians who today bring legislation before Parliament, declaring that it is for the people but, in reality, it is for parochial, business and personal interests? A cursory reading of the draft law should testify to the deceit.
How can a man introduce legislation on the floor of Parliament, knowing full well that the law will outlive him; that what benefits he sees for himself from the bad law will just last the natural balance of his life but the hardships and, perhaps, harm he introduces with such a law will live on to inflict injury upon his children and their children into posterity? That is surely a monstrous crime.
Sir Mekere did not change the law for the sake of it. He saw something fundamental that needed protecting or that required achievement and he was compelled by that higher duty to introduce laws to achieve that result. Mekere, it was who introduced the Integrity of Parties and Candidates (Olipac) law which protected Sir Michael Somare’s government a full term, for the first time, between 2002 and 2007.
The economy grew robustly in that period and a supplementary budget was introduced almost annually to allocate excess revenue. At the end of that term of Parliament, there was some K9 billion in trust accounts which partially helped to weather the economic turmoil of the 1998 world recession.
When the Olipac was changed and watered down through the courts, Parliament was back-playing its favorite game of Motion of No Confidence and service delivery and people’s interests were left outside on the steps of Parliament, forgotten along with the reflecting pool that has yet to be filled and the fountain that is fast-gathering dust and rust in the Waigani heat.