Retirement is a significant life transition that allows individuals to shift their focus from professional responsibilities to personal interests and relaxation. It can be a time of freedom and exploration, offering the opportunity to pursue long-held hobbies, travel, or spend more time with loved ones.
In this stage of life, someone stops working full time or leaves their career, typically because they have reached a certain age or have accumulated enough financial resources to support themselves.
In an exclusive interview with Lydia Mirembe, Corporate and Public Affairs, at Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA) told SML News UG that retirement requires careful planning, both financially and emotionally, to ensure a fulfilling and secure post-working life.
“As URBRA we usually teach people about retirement saving and the different schemes they can join, if somebody picked interests, they would never fail to find a scheme to work with.” said Mirembe.
Uganda has two types of retirement benefits schemes that include Public Service schemes and Voluntary Service schemes, all together contain 64 active schemes. Public service schemes include, Public Service Pension scheme, National Social Security scheme, Army Force Pension scheme and the Parliamentary Pension scheme which are mandatory for workers in the Public service to save for retirement with a specific scheme they relate to, while the Voluntary schemes include, Insurance schemes and occupational funds.
In the Uganda Public Service laws, workers are required to retire at the age of 60 years, while in Private sector, a worker can retire at 55 years, however, different employers and retirement schemes set their own age limit at which someone can receive their retirement benefits.
“Different schemes have different retirement age, each has guidelines that stipulates their age limits which their members are supposed to collect their retirement benefits. For example voluntary schemes have a trust deed that determine when to withdraw your savings. It lays out the agreement between the trustee and the members of the scheme.” Said Mirembe.
All these retirement schemes both in the private and public sector are under the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority (URBRA) whose role is to regulate the establishment, management, and operation of the retirement schemes, licensing, supervising institutions which provide retirement benefits products and services and promote the development of the retirement benefits sector.
URBRA is an oversight body and not a retirement benefits scheme. It was established under section 2 of the Uganda Retirement Benefits Regulatory Authority Act 15 of 2011.