COSATU’s proposed pension withdrawal relief plan is only meant to help those workers who did not receive 100% of their salaries
28 May 2020
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) has noted the overwhelming support that its decision to submit an urgent request to the Minister of Finance, Tito Mboweni to allow workers to access some of their pension money has received from workers. The leadership of COSATU wrote to the Minister requesting him to issue an emergency Directive through Emergency draft regulations to allow workers who were not paid 100% to access part of their retirement fund savings, as income replacement for COVID-19 emergency financial relief.
The Federation wants to clarify, though, that this proposal is not a general application to all workers, but it is only meant to help those workers who were not paid 100% of their incomes through Covid-19TERS fund by giving them access to their retirement savings to cushion financial hardship.
Workers in the public service and others who have been receiving their salaries in full will not benefit from this but will be accommodated in another intervention that is being looked at that will see GEPF and PIC helping them with their housing scheme. Talks are already underway with PIC and in other relevant forums to address this housing challenge for deserving civil servants.
We continue to engage the National Treasury to push that these government employees receive support from the PIC and GEPF to deal with the urgent issue of a Government Employees Housing Scheme.