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Mon, 18 Jul 2016 09:52:55 +0200
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Dear Members,



        1 . The General Secretary of FFOA, Marco Breschi, and i have been attending meetings              in Vienna this past week where our Pension Board is presently meeting.

        2.  We have also met with the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sergio Arvizu, and the Representative of the Secretary General for our Investments (RSG), Carolyn Boykin, in Rome,  on 24 June, subsequent to our General Assembly where those who attended had the opportunity to question the CEO.



An update on Pension Fund matters



3. If you have seen it, a new petition that is circulating online is again an exaggerated and misleading attempt to stop the CEO of the Pension Fund (PF) from managing his operations. The Pension Fund is NOT going to leave the UN and the CEO is NOT attempting to take over the investments (which are managed completely separately by the RSG). After listening to and questioning both these senior managers earlier this week, our position remains unchanged. We do not support the various petitions started by a small number of people to sow unrest. The Pension Fund has several oversight bodies, one of which has criticized some aspects of the management of the investments by the RSG. The annual meeting of the Pension Board  includes a meeting of the Pension Fund's Investment Committee and other oversight bodies associated with the Pension Fund.



4. During this week's meeting of the international Federation of Associations of Former.  International Civil Servants (FAFICS) in Vienna, where i had the honor of being elected Presiding Officer, all representatives of the retirees associations , including FFOA had the chance to hear and question the senior management of the Pension Fund. Following that meeting, the President of FAFICS, Linda Saputelli, issued an appeal that "This latest petition contains significant misrepresentations, repeating, for example, old allegations of fraud of which the CEO had been completely cleared by OIOS  ( the UN audit office) some months ago. It further asserts that new financial rules being proposed for the Fund enable the CEO to take over the Fund investments and outsource them to Wall Street. If this narrative sounds familiar, it is because it is a repeat of the one already used last year in the campaign by staff representatives against the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This year the draft financial rules are fuelling the false narrative....FAFICS will continue to represent the best interests of retirees at the Pension Board which is why it cannot support a petition that distorts facts." The draft new financial rules have in fact been drafted by the UN Office of Legal Affairs, at the request of the General Assembly.



5. As mentioned, the Pension Board is meeting now, with representatives of the staff and 6 representatives of FAFICS participating, along with representatives of the member Organizations and member states. There will be ample opportunity to discuss the pertinent issues.



6. During his meeting with us, the CEO reported that all of the open 'cases' (e.g. mainly new pensions - the so-called 'backlog') that were extant on 1 March 2016 have now been dealt with. Processing rates are now higher than before, but the number of new retirees has also increased. Nevertheless, the CEO stated that all requests to the Pension Fund will be handled from now on within two months of receipt of all the necessary documents.



7. The FFOA office will be sending more information over the next week or so to keep you fully up-to-date, including a new feature, Newsletters, from our PF secretariat's newly-appointed Senior Communications Officer, whom we have just met.



8 . THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT OUR PENSIONS ARE SAFE AS OUR LIABILITIES ARE FULLY FUNDED. ASSETS PRESENTLY IN HAND (OVER $53 BILLION) COVER ESTIMATED NEEDS FOR THE NEXT 50 YEARS.



Sincerely, alan prien, president, FFOA



(With full acknowledgement to ARICSA, our sister pensioners' Association in Vienna, from whom some of the above was adapted.)



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