KEY POINTS:
Thousands of employees and employers do not have information about the KiwiSaver superannuation scheme, one working day before the scheme comes into force on Sunday.
Applications from four would-be KiwiSaver providers are still being processed by the Government Actuary, an electronic interface between providers and the Inland Revenue Department is not ready, and budgeting agencies say they cannot cope with calls being diverted to them by the department's call centre.
The Federation of Family Budgeting Services has been funded for only 1.5 fulltime-equivalent staff to handle calls to the 0800 SORT MONEY freephone number about whether people should join KiwiSaver.
"People are asking their employers, 'How do I join?' and their employers are telling them to ring us," said federation chief executive Raewyn Fox.
"The employers have the employee packs with the registration forms in them, but the employers are having trouble processing all the information.
"So we think that if it doesn't fly, it's not because people don't want to join, it's because people don't know how to and are not getting good information. It's all happening too quickly."
Finance Minister Michael Cullen said yesterday that he was prepared to look at an application from the federation for more money.
KiwiSaver starts on Sunday, six weeks after the Budget transformed it from a voluntary scheme with minimal subsidies to a partly compulsory scheme which employers will have to pay into from next April and which will give every contributor an immediate Government subsidy of up to $20 a week.
Inland Revenue spokeswoman Lise Hutcheon said yesterday that 1.5 million employee information packs were mailed to all employers by the second week of this month.
"We sent enough for 40 per cent of their workforce, which gave enough for new employees and an initial number of existing employees interested in joining KiwiSaver."
But Employers and Manufacturers Association advisory services manager David Lowe, who is half-way through delivering KiwiSaver seminars to 2000 employers, said the packs did not seem to have reached many workplaces.
"One business I was talking to in Waikato has 200 staff and got 30 pamphlets. They are expecting all 200 staff to be asking questions."
He said the last-minute changes to the scheme gave employers no confidence in it.
"The employers are not out there bagging the scheme. They are still relatively positive," he said.
"It's just that there is a lack of information and there is also this uncertainty about what the future holds. KiwiSaver has the air of changeability about it now."
An actuary working for several KiwiSaver providers, John Melville, said Inland Revenue had not met its deadline for setting up an electronic interface with providers.
"They have published a document telling us what we have to do to do it manually. In other words, they will not have it running by July 1 and more importantly October 1, when they start pushing money through."
But Ms Hutcheon said it had always been planned that the electronic system would start by October 1, when Inland Revenue is to make the first payments to providers, and that deadline would be met.
The manager of the Government's insurance and superannuation unit, Gavin Quigan, said 26 KiwiSaver schemes had been registered by yesterday, and four more were being processed.
