Engineers syndicate council under fire over ‘floundering fund’

AMMAN — As the Jordan Engineers Association (JEA) called for a meeting Sunday to look into means to address challenges facing its pension fund, members slammed the move and called for revealing the “true” reasons behind the financial difficulties.

“The council called for a meeting Sunday and we boycotted it because the council wanted to present results of a study on why the fund is facing risks,” Raed Haddadin, vice president of the civil engineering unit at the JEA, told The Jordan Times.

“We were not part of the study and were not informed about it. There was no discussion with members even about proposed solutions to address what the council claims are challenges,” Haddadin claimed.

“The fund’s assets exceed JD320 million and its investment unit has been making profits over the years, so how come they claim the fund is facing serious risks. We demand to know what went wrong.”

The JEA council, he said, proposed raising the retirement age from 60 to 65 years or increasing pension deductions. 

“Both proposals are rejected. There needs to be coordination with all JEA members,” Haddadin added over the phone, demanding to know “why the fund’s investment unit got involved in losing investments and ventures”. 

“We also need to know how the study was conducted. We cannot just go to a meeting to witness the results without knowing how they came up with them.”

A committee formed to “salvage” the JEA’s pension fund issued a statement in which it called for boycotting the meeting.

The committee voiced its opposition to the solutions proposed by the JEA council to address the problem, calling for transparency.

The JEA was not available for comment in spite of several attempts by The Jordan Times.

The JEA includes 130,000 members, 40,000 of whom work abroad, the syndicate’s president, Majid Tabba, said on Saturday during a meeting with Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, adding that there are around 57,000 engineering students in the Kingdom and 15,000 students abroad, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.