Join the SSNIT pension scheme to reduce poverty in old age - Director General

Dr John Ofori-Tinkorang, Director General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has called on the self-employed and people in the informal sector to endeavour to be part of the pension scheme.

“This will help contribute significantly to the reduction in old-age poverty, and most importantly, giving Ghanaians dignified pensions,” the Director-General emphasized.

He said the country could not operate an efficient social protection system when the majority of its workforce who were in the informal sector was out of the protection bracket.

“We simply cannot have a social protection system that protects only 1.7 million or so workers and neglects close to 10 million workers in the informal sector,” Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, said at a meeting with some stakeholders in the Old Tafo Municipality in the Ashanti region.

The meeting was organized by SSNIT to sensitize workers in the informal sector to join the scheme in order to enjoy the offered benefits, especially during retirement.

The Director-General said the Trust had embarked on a nationwide education and sensitization programme to address the misconception that SSNIT was meant for people in the formal sector alone.

“Many people have the misconception that SSNIT is for those in the formal sector, and we are working assiduously to change that through our meetings with the self-employed,” he stated.

Out of the total active SSNIT contributors, the self-employed constitute only14, 314, representing 0.8 per cent.

Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang said his outfit was bent on improving on the current situation to help expand the pensions scheme.

The vision was to bring on board about one million people in the self-employed category to roll onto the pensions scheme in the coming years.

Meanwhile, participants in the meeting were given an insight into the distribution of the funds under Act 766, old age pension, the cumulative rate of the SSNIT pensions, SSNIT scheme Tier One, and clarifying misconceptions about the scheme.

Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang described the meeting as fruitful and falling in line with efforts by the Trust to extend pensions coverage to benefit workers in the informal sector.

He said currently, there were about 250,000 pensioners on the scheme, assuring that the Management was committed to ensuring that pensions of contributors were uninterrupted and of a reasonable value for the rest of their lives.