By Dianah mukui
Over the last decade former workers of Barclays Bank of Kenya-now Absa bank Kenya, have lost half the value of their purchasing power due to inflation, poor management of their savings and unfair treatment of pensioners across different markets.
The pensioners say consultants Joanna Combrink and Colin Southey have told Absa Bank Kenya the purchasing power of the Absa Staff Pension Fund beneficiaries had decreased substantially (around 50 percent over the last 13 years).
The former staffers of Absa Bank say their decades-long savings have not been earning them a decent enough return to beat years of inflation which has made it difficult to cope with the high cost of living.
The lender claims the market has not been generating higher returns during the good years, and worse still, has signaled even lower returns this year blaming it on the economic slowdown.
As pensioners we hold that the poor performance of the fund is attributed to lack of monitoring by the trustees to engage with their investment manager and poor investment decisions by the fund managers.
The bank has disregarded our input and we have lost our representation at the Board of Trustees after two of our members were not replaced when they retired but the Bank introduced more employees of the Bank as Trustees contrary to the Retirements Benefits