Abstract:
Pension schemes are sources of income security for the aged, the disabled, the invalid and the unemployed. The economic freedom and financial security during old age and retirement are of major concern to the employees, who, not only wished to provide themselves, but also for their families. Effectiveness of pension scheme, however, relies on the active involvement and understanding of employees and employer. Hence this study attempted to assess the challenges of implementing social security pension scheme for employees of private organization in some selected private organization at Jimma town, South West Ethiopia. A descriptive cross sectional study, using both quantitative and qualitative methods was employed from March 10-30/2015 at Jimma town. The quantitative and qualitative data was collected by using survey questionnaire from a sample size of 306 respondents and conducting interview with key informants of private organization employer and employees in the social security agency Jimma branch and document analysis. The sample was taken using multi sampling method. Data analysis was done by using SPSS. The findings of the study show that 67.6% of respondents confirm relating to the benefit of the scheme up on their retirement age, whereas the realization of the scheme does not consider the active participation and interest of employees in terms of their income and benefit provided by the scheme. This leads to resistance among them to accept and implement the scheme. Moreover there is a huge gap in terms of awareness among employees as the administrative bodies done very little to raise awareness. Therefore, the administrative bodies should give more emphasis on the improvement of employees and employer awareness and their active participation in the realization of the scheme. Furthermore the government may need to consider proclamation No. 715/2011 to improve the coverage and to reach the benefit fairly toward all employees for effective and efficient implementation of the scheme.
