By Kusekwa Kusekwa
The High Court in Moshi has ordered Tudeley Estates Limited, an agricultural company, to pay over 232m/- to the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) being non-remitted members’ contributions and penalties for retirement benefits for 52 months from 2019 to 2023.
The order was given in a summary judgement, meaning the defendants did not challenge the case after they failed to seek permission to defend the suit in respect of the payments in question.
‘The defendant will also pay accumulated penalties thereon due and payable to the plaintiff by the defendant. The defendant is ordered to pay interests at court rate of 7% from date of judgment to the date of full payment,’ Judge Adrian Kilimi declared in the judgment delivered recently.
According to the law establishing NSSF, the defendant, as a contributing member to the plaintiff, was required to make a compulsory contribution of 10 per cent of their own as members and another 10 per cent deducted from the salaries of employees from the total wage bill, making it a total of 20 per cent remittance each month.
NSSF submitted that despite such statutory obligation, the defendant failed, neglected, ignored and defaulted to remit the members contributions each month despite several follow ups.
According to the plaintiff, the defendant was in breach of their statutory obligation to remit members principal contributions amounting to Sh. 74,787,324/51, being outstanding principal member’s contributions for 52 months covering the period from April 2019, June 2019 to August 2023.
Such default led to the accumulated penalties of Sh 157,882,337/77. Thus, in total the plaintiff claimed from the defendant a total payment of Sh. 232,669,662.28. ‘In the circumstances, accordingly a summary judgement is hereby entered in favour of the first plaintiff that the defendant failed to remit the statutory contributions,’ the judge ruled.
