The Fiji Islands Council of Trade Unions will today hand in its submission to the Fiji National Provident Fund requesting the fund not to rush into the reforms and give time for further consultations.

FICTU held a public forum at the Suva Civic Centre earlier this week and presented some of the alternative options that FNPF can take rather than reducing the pension rate to around 9 percent from the current 15 percent.

Currently, some single FNPF pensioners are on 25 percent annual pension while others are on 15 percent.

FNPF consultants, Mercer and Promontory have already stated that these rates are unsustainable because people are outliving their total FNPF balances.

They also say the reduction in the pension rate needed to take place as soon as possible.

However FICTU General Secretary, Attar Singh said they will propose for the current pension rates to stay and FNPF to look at increasing the employer and employee FNPF contributions in 2015 and again in 2020.

Singh said they believe this would resolve the current issue.