DO NOT THROW OUT THE BABY WITH THE BATH WATER

I am not a big fan of parliamentary probes. They tend to be high on drama and low on substance.

Last week's parliamentary report on the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) probe did not disappoint in this regard.

The probe which took two weeks in February, was called in response to gender minister Betty Amongi's allegations of mismanagement at the fund that were preventing her from renewing former managing director Richard Byarugaba's contract.

The probe hearings served up a lot of sensation and ended up besmirching the reputations of the minister, board and management. Given the tone of the probe its recommendations for minister Amongi to resign, scrapping of the board and suspension of the entire management should not have come as a surprise.

Its former US President Barack Obama who said that democracy is messy. And in the exercise of that messiness a lot of good can get thrown out with the bath water.

"When you strip away all the dazzle and razzmatazz I came away feeling that the good performance of the NSSF management over the last decade was overshadowed and unfairly so by what I thought were some administrative lapses...

These lapses while quite shocking were often seen out of context and blown out of proportion.

First of all the fund has shown consistent growth since 2011 growing to sh17.5trillion last year from sh1.7trillion. A tenfold growth that has been independently verified and speaks to the progress the management has made for its members.

And while it is true that some investments have not shown much growth during the period, it is unrealistic to expect uniform growth in a basket of assets and to pick certain parts of the portfolio, which are under performing to damn the entire portfolio.

In fact, to objectively judge the Fund one should look at their 10 year strategic plan that was drawn up in 2015 and expected to expire in 2025.

In this plan they had set a target of growing the fund to sh20trillion,  a target they seem to likely to achieve ahead of target; to improve customer satisfaction to 95 percent, a figure which stands at 83 percent today; growing staff satisfaction to 95 percent by 2025, which is currently at 92 percent and finally to reduce turnaround time for processing of benefits to one day from the average of 26 days in 2015. Today this figure stands at nine days.

"This progress shared publicly with the members annually, suggest that more has gone right than wrong at the Fund. To lose sight of this would be to unfair to the management and demotivating for future leaders of the Fund....

One issue that was particularly unfair was the committee's criticism of the sh16b and sh17b bonuses paid to staff in 2021 and 2022 as excessive and uncalled for.

In any other organisation in this country those figures would seem outlandish, but in both cases this was in recognition of the funds creation of sh2.3trillion and sh1.7trillion in additional value. Simple arithmetic would show this was one percent or less of the value created and well with in a realistic range.

The number looks big if not viewed in its proper context.

The parliamentary probe was a good one to the extent that it gave everybody a hearing, the challenge was the conclusions it arrived at, which painted the management and staff in a less than fair light.

I know that the attraction to control or at least influence the goings on at the sh17trillion Fund can be hard to resist for even the most upright saints. But we need to recognise that the Fund is on a positive trajectory and it  should be helped to maintain this for the benefit of its members and the economy as a whole.

I have been a member of the Fund since my first paycheck in December 1995, I have an obvious bias to see NSSF continue progressing in its positive direction for at least the next five years. Beyond my own selfish needs it will do me good if it continues being profitably run well into the future so my sons and their children after them can benefit.

"This has been the longest stretch of good performance of the Fund in living memory and  compares favourably with other funds in the region....

The Kenya's NSSF, which has been in existence longer than our own, lags behind our Fund in performance. By one measure, their assets have grown an average of eight percent annually over the last five years compared to 17 percent per year for our NSSF. And  this despite our Fund being bigger than theirs.

As we go into the debate of the report by the whole house of parliament, we  would do well to keep this perspective in mind.

Again to paint this period black would be a great disservice to the management and the future prospects of the Fund and if the house cares anything about the members of NSSF they will do well to keep this in mind.