Welfare schemes needed: Tarutia

By DALE LUMA
LESS than 10 per cent of the country’s population is covered by superannuation, says the Authorised Super Funds of PNG (ASFPNG) president Ian Tarutia.
Tarutia said aside from superannuation or savings schemes provided in the country, there were no social security or welfare schemes in place to look after citizens.
“This is an issue that we need to address,” Tarutia said.
“What is it that we can do here to increase coverage?
“As an industry, we have pushed to remove the current filter which is around 15 premised on the number of employees that an establishment or employer is employing to attract employer contributions.
“Let’s do away with that. And if you are working and paying your tax and registered with the IRC then you attract automatic coverage.
“In that way, we can expand superannuation to a greater portion of the population.
“Individual funds have initiated activities or strategies to increase coverage. If you look at the informal sector, there’s a lot of money that’s generating in our informal sector. Can that be captured inside not only a superannuation environment but formal sector as well? So you take the 850,000 that we currently have registered and you look at the informal sector or the SME,” he said.
“Is that another segment of our population that we can cover?”
Tarutia said the ASFs have already put in place strategies to cover a greater portion of our people in superannuation.
“If you are talking about a structure and a legal framework and universal coverage, than you remove the filter and you capture more of our people.”