Assessing the level of awareness of serving staff of federal tertiary educational institutions in Ebonyi state on the operations of the contributory pension scheme

The introduction of the Contributory Pension Scheme (CPS) by the Nigerian government was intended to alleviate the sufferings of retirees due to the irregular and/or non payment of their retirement benefits under the old scheme. Studies carried out indicate that there still exist bottlenecks in the prompt and regular payments of retirees’ retirement benefits under the CPS. Part of the reasons for such lapses has to do with ignorance which ultimately manifests in improper documentation by retirees before retirement. The main focus of this study was to examine the level of awareness of the operations of the CPS by serving staff of federal tertiary educational institutions in Ebonyi state, Nigeria. Data was generated through the use of questionnaire. A total of 354 questionnaires were distributed out of which 300 were retrieved and analysed using descriptive statistics. Results indicate that majority of the staff were ignorant of their retirement savings account information as well as the percentage of salary being deducted for retirement. However, staff were well informed of their right to change their Pension Fund Administrators (PFAs) when the need arises. The problems encountered by the staff in the operations of the CPS border on inadequate information flow from workers’ PFAs and employers and the lack of capacity and technology to access information on pensions via the internet. This study recommends that the government, PFAs and workers should rise up to this challenge through a more robust enlightenment program to forestall further cracks in the implementation of CPS in Nigeria.