RMA visits Basotho pensioners and beneficiaries 

Maseru

Rand Mutual Authority (RMA), a South African based insurance company, hosted a Pensioner Welfare Management Programme themed RMA Lekgotla in Maseru this Thursday. 

The summit which invited stakeholders and Basotho mine pensioners and their beneficiaries was used as a platform to update them on the benefit packages and improvements that the company is devising to help them improve their lives.

Established 130 years ago, RMA is an insurance company that was implemented and established to administer mine workers, iron, metal and steel industry employees. It currently has a total of 2945 pensioners in Lesotho.

The Pensioner Welfare Management Programme was therefore designed to ensure that ex miners who have endured occupational diseases and those that have stopped working due to injuries incurred at work as well as their families continue to get access to benefits including medical care, bursaries, enterprise development support and income upliftment.

Aligned with the corporate’s motto, “caring, compassionate and compensation”, the RMA shared its implementations which are already running and those that are still in the pipeline, designed to improve the lives of Basotho mine pensioners and their beneficiaries.

After the Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Labour and employment Moshe Mosaase declared the opening of the event, the RMA Chief Executive Officer of COID & Group Operations, Berlina Moroole, echoed that the company is devoted to giving the best service provision for their pensioners and their beneficiaries. 

“We are here to tell you that we are with you” she told the pensioners, ensuring that the company cares.

She said if in any way the pensioners feel they are not being serviced well, the company doors and lines are open to receive criticism and improve their efforts, assuring that the summit was also a safe apace space to engage and allow them to voice out their grievances if any. 

“We want to hear how we can improve. We have made a commitment that our workers that we perceive as our heroes and pension beneficiaries will always be at the heart of our story, this is the very reason why we exist,” said Moroole.

“We continue to pioneer solutions that are fundamental to your wellbeing and dignity. Our main identity is anchored in a clear and deliberate purpose, shaped by fundamental values that guide our every decision,” she emphasized. 

She further announced that some of their objectives as the company is to assist injured workers and pensioners who are still in the age that enables them to work and learn new skills that could help them fit in the working industry. 

Above many of these ideas, she emphasized that RMA is working tirelessly to refining and improving the value of the compensations given to pensioners and their beneficiaries. 

Dr Luvuyo Dzingwa, the Medical and Pensions Management General Manager, tabulated some of the initiatives that RMA has set in place. 

“When we sat and planned new programmes to improve our service provision, we noticed that social interventions like this one could help us understand better what you as the people we serve may require from us. Some of the things we looked into was that we need to set some money aside which will help your children through primary and secondary schools.”

Dr Dzingwa noted that on the model they build to improve pensioners and their beneficiaries’ lives, four focus areas were implemented. 

The first model is an income security. In this section, the idea is to increase the monthly pension of every beneficiary that earns below M5000 for three years and this will be implemented in phases, starting with disabled pensioners and over 2000 pensioners are already reaping the benefit.

He reiterated that the second focus area is on Health Benefits, where RMA has decide meet pensioners halfway through mobile clinics.

Dr Dzingwa informed that illnesses like hypertension and diabetes will be monitored as well as screenings and diagnosis services.

The third area is cocial assistance that will cover primary and secondary fees and provide skills development and social support while the last model will focus on business support where pensioners who are already running businesses will be given an opportunity to apply for financial support to boost their businesses.