Gold contributors get Gold pensions – SSNIT

Charles Akwei Garshong, Acting Public Affairs Manager for the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has disclosed that some Ghanaian workers are usually not sincere with the salaries they earn when contributing towards SSNIT.

The SSNIT Boss shared that some high-earning salary workers falsify their earnings in order to contribute very little, hence gain less during pensions than they actually should be gaining.

Speaking on Happy98.9 FM’s “Happy Morning Show” with Samuel Eshun, he likened the idea of SSNIT to that of Insurance companies, as he said, “The concept of SSNIT is basically in the same vein as Insurance companies. So when you insure a ‘tiko’ car and something unfortunate happens to the car, the insurance company will look at the price of a ‘tiko’ car and replace it with the damaged one.

So that’s the same way when you come to us and indicate your salary is of a ‘tiko’ car, you’ll get the exact pension as that when you go on retirement. Some take good salaries like a ‘Benz’ higher than the ‘tiko’ but they declare they earn a ‘tiko’ salary. So when such people are on retirement, we cannot give them a ‘Benz’ pension’ they didn’t contribute for since they contributed as a ‘tiko’ salary while on ‘Benz’.

Mr. Garshong urged Ghanaians to be thoroughly sincere with their contributions to SSNIT in order to yield huge pensions on retirement.

“We encourage Ghanaians to contribute their SSNIT in accordance to the amount they earn as salaries. So long as your contribution is good, your pension will be good,” he added.

The SSNIT spokesperson further indicated that three factors are considered for contributors' pensions amount.

“We determine contributors pension on three variables. One is the number of years one has contributed to the scheme. The other is the salary declared while making the contribution and the age of the contributor going on retirement. With the salary, we use the average of your best three salaries, while the number of years you’ve contributed also gives us an indication of the percentage of your salary SSNIT would give you a pension.

The compulsory retirement age is at 60 years, while voluntary retirement is from the age of 55 years. This is the formulae for everyone, both with office workers and the domestic workers as well,” he said.