It has been a mixed bag of press coverage for the Samoa National Provident Fund (S.N.P.F.) Management and Board Directors over the last week.

It started last Monday with the announcement of a $42.35 million interim interest payment this year with all contributors rewarded with a 3 per cent payout or $25 million cash bonanza.

But the celebration turned sour with criticisms of the Fund’s Management and Board Directors’ approval of a $50 tala payment to each pensioner and a special donation to 13 charitable organisations.

Our letters-to-the-editor page became a battle field with a contributor questioning the unilateral decision by the Fund’s Management and Board Directors to approve the payments without consulting the contributors.

A couple of days later the Minister for Finance, Mulipola Anarosa Ale-Molio'o revealed that she was not a party to the decision by the Fund’s Management and Board Directors, to approve the payments.

Early this week this newspaper came across another correspondence, a 15 March 2022 letter authored by the Minister for Finance and addressed to the Fund’s Management and Board Directors, urging them to increase the payout from 5 to 10 per cent in order to signify the 50th anniversary of the Fund.

The Fund’s C.E.O. Pauli Prince Suhren responded to the Minister in a letter dated 16 March 2022, explaining the rationale behind his Management and the Board Directors’ decision to only pay out 5 per cent and not 8 or 10 per cent.

“The question why not eight per cent or ten per cent,” a translation of the letter by Pauli reads. “The answer is – this is only for the interim dividend as clarified on the information paper provided.

“The final dividend will be declared in June every year as the end of the financial year for the organisation and in accordance to its principal act.

“This means – we will know the final dividend by June 2022 and will benefit the members again.”

But that wasn’t the end of the correspondence exchange, early this week the Fund’s C.E.O. turned his attention to this newspaper and attacked the Samoa Observer in a letter-to-the-editor contribution.

“Times change but some things remain the same. The Samoa Observer continues to peddle sensationalised falsehoods. I used to suspect it, now I am absolutely sure of it.”

We welcome his scrutiny and criticism of the coverage that this newspaper has given to the exchange of correspondence between himself and the Minister for Finance. 

It is within his rights to feel aggrieved about the publicity, and it should be known that it is also within the rights of the contributors, to be aware of any decisions by the Fund pertaining to their S.N.P.F. savings.

This newspaper accepts the noble gesture of a $50 tala payment to each pensioner and a special donation to 13 charitable organisations, but contributors are questioning the unilateral decision by the Fund’s Management and the Board Directors without consultation with the contributors.

We must draw C.E.O. Pauli’s attention to the letter-to-the-editor contribution published earlier this week, which we thought asked a pertinent question that strikes at the core of governance of an superannuation organisation that has custody of contributors’ funds: 

“The real issue is not ‘who’ you give the money to or ‘where’ you give the money to; the real issue is ‘who has the right to that money’. 

“The issue of ‘property rights’ was not given any consideration at all in the decision that was made and I am afraid the ‘property rights’ of the contributors have been violated.”

Amid all these correspondence between the S.N.P.F. Management and the Minister for Finance going back to last month, it has become obvious that the S.N.P.F. Act needs to be reviewed at some point, to ascertain the responsibilities and powers of the Fund’s Management and Board Directors to make them more accountable to the contributors in terms of their decision-making processes.