By Naa Shormei Odonkor
Koforidua, June 13, GNA – The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has enlisted the help of journalists in the Eastern Region to educate citizens about its Self-Employed Enrollment Drive (SEED).
The goal is to ensure that registrants have income protection and can enjoy pensions before and during their old age.
Addressing participants during a workshop in Koforidua, Mr. Charles Akwei Garshong, the National Public Affairs Manager of SSNIT, said the campaign was designed to encourage self-employed individuals to register with SSNIT.
Representatives from the Ghana News Agency, Ghanaian Times, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Daily Statesman, Freedom FM, City News, and Obuoba FM attended the one-day training.
“We intend to increase enrollment of the self-employed to more than 700,000 active contributors by the end of this year,” Mr. Garshong noted.
He explained that this was due to the fact that only 38,000 of the approximately 6.7 million self-employed in the country were active contributors to SSNIT, which he described as discouraging.
He emphasised that of the nearly 1.9 million SSNIT contributors, 1.17 million were employed in the private sector, 679,000 were employed in the public sector, and 38,000 were self-employed.
Even though there has been an increase in the number of self-employed enrolled this year, he emphasised the need for the media to educate the public about SSNIT.
“A year ago, when we started the stakeholders’ engagement with their leaders, there were only 14,000 people on the scheme, but as of this month, it has increased to 38,000,” he stated.
According to him, SSNIT is commonly misunderstood as an investment organisation; as a result, their investment returns are often criticised as being very low.
However, he said: “SSNIT is an insurance institute that gave contributors a partial replacement of what they ensured during active service before pension.
“The higher your contribution, the better your pension. This depends on the amount you earn as a salary every month.”
He explained that 13.5 percent of an individual’s basic salary was paid to SSNIT, which then paid 2.5 percent to the National Health Insurance Scheme to ensure free healthcare in retirement.
Mr. Garshong stated that everyone is entitled to an annuity in old age; however, according to the Ghana Statistical Service, only eleven percent of the elderly receive a monthly pension.
“What happens to the rest, close to 1.7 million,” he quizzed. How do they feed.”
To eliminate the dependency rate in old age, he said SSNIT was intensifying education on the SEED campaign by re-strategising its message from what the law states to educating citizens on the scheme’s value.
GNA