<<Print>>

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has again called on employees to ensure that their employers pay the exact amounts deducted from their salaries to the Trust.

It also asked employees to insist on having their employers consolidate their basic salaries and allowances and pay their pensions on the total rather than ring-fence one only to pay on the smaller amount.

According to SSNIT, the pensions of contributors could only be calculated on the amount received by the Trust on their behalf and advised that it would be in employees’  interest to take a keen interest in what was deducted and paid to the Trust.

The General Manager of the Benefits Division of SSNIT, Mr Leslie Arde-Acquah, made the call when the Trust held a day’s seminar for media editors at Aburi in the Eastern Region.

It was meant to expose the editors to the workings of SSNIT and how pensions worked in general in the country.

The call on employees to be more interested in the amount paid on their behalf comes at a time when many workers continue to agitate for higher pensions to be paid to them when they go on retirement.

They argue that in spite of the number of years they work or contribute to the scheme, they are normally given paltry sums which they feel do not match what they contributed.

Many workers either advertently or inadvertently pay lip-service to the value of the scheme while they are in active service. They become agitated and tend to delve into the issues only when they are about to go on pension and realise that the pension would be their only source of income.

There have been reports that clearly indicate that many workers deliberately connive with their employers to reduce the amount of money on which the SSNIT deductions are calculated.

Others are also known to ring-fence their huge allowances and allow for the deductions to be made on only their basic salaries, meaning minus the allowances, which are often bigger.

For instance, if a worker earns a GH¢1,000 a month as basic and his allowances bring it to GH¢1,500. It is better to have the SSNIT deductions made on both amounts put together, rather than allow for the deductions to be made only on the basic.

The agitation by workers is one of the reasons the government pushed for reforms in the entire pension scheme but it is now emerging that the SSNIT pension is more secure and beneficial because of its size and security.

According to Mr Arde-Acquah, the bigger the amount, the better it is for the employee during retirement, because the scheme is not expected to make contributors richer than they were during their working days but to cushion them in the period they are on retirement.

“I can tell you that there are hundreds of employees who declare salaries far lower than the minimum but in reality that is not the case. In the end, they are those who come to say SSNIT is cheating them because their pensions are meagre,” he said.

Mr Arde-Acquah said the Trust had no intention to fleece any contributor because that would defeat the purpose of the scheme, which has been acclaimed internationally as one of the best in the world.

He said the investments of the Trust were safe and sound and yielding returns that would keep the scheme alive for many decades, noting that through honesty, beneficiaries would enjoy better retirement.