Management of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has described the assertions that the pension scheme was only reserved for government workers as a “big misconception”.
Director-General of SSNIT, Dr. Ofori Tenkorang has, therefore, encouraged every Ghanaian worker to register with the scheme.
He made the remarks while addressing stakeholders to find ways of expanding and deepening coverage of the pension scheme to self-employed workers and churches.
“The composition of the SSNIT pension scheme has changed. Maybe when it started it was the majority of government workers. But today, we have about 62% of contributors coming from the private sector. So they are more than the people who are paid by the government.”
The stakeholder engagement with leaders of churches and Christian organizations was held to discuss ways of extending social security coverage to self-employed and workers in the informal sector.
He explained that SSNIT’s core mandate is to ensure that we all have a good standard of living even during our old age.
SSNIT scheme is a generous scheme and every Ghanaian worker must adhere to register with it, he opined.
He further indicated that there are so many pension products, but the difference between SSNIT and the other tiers is that, while the other tiers pay a one-time lump sum, the SSNIT Scheme pays you a monthly pension until death.
Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, said it has become necessary to extend coverage to informal sector workers not only to increase active membership and contributor base of the scheme but also to ensure that every worker in Ghana enjoys social protection.
He was worried that a little over 14,000 self-employed workers contribute to the SSNIT Pension Scheme, a figure he said was not encouraging.
He also averred that contributions to SSNIT are safe and any assertions from people.that contributing to SSNIT was not safe was untrue and must be treated with contempt.
The meeting was attended by representatives of churches, and heads of the Charismatic, Pentecostal, and orthodox churches in Ghana.
By: Rashid Obodai Provencal/Rainbowradioonline.com/Ghana
