The Social Security and National Insurance Trust, SSNIT, has held a one day training workshop for selected Media Personnel from Upper East and Northern region in the Northern regional capital of Tamale to educate them on its new enrollment drive policy targeted at roping in Self employed workers in the informal sector onto the retirement scheme.
The Self Employed Enrollment Drive (SEED) is an initiative that has been launched by SSNIT to afford self employed workers in the informal sector the opportunity to sign up to the scheme to afford them pension benefits at their old age just as their counterparts in the formal sector when they cannot work again and to reduce poverty among workers who are not public sector workers.
Explaining the reason for SEED, the public affairs manager of SSNIT, Mr. Charles Akwei Garshong, said the SEED initiative is focused on self employed workers to help them join the scheme to make voluntary monthly contributions towards their retirement to enable them get monthly pensions when they retire and to reduce poverty among the aged.
” We realised that only fourteen thousand out of the close to 1.9 million SSNIT contributors are self employed and what this means is that with the several millions of self employed workers, should they retire there is no hope for them to get monthly pensions. So the Self Employed Enrollment Drive had to come on. This is an initiative that tries to focus more on self employed workers and the need for them to sign on to the SSNIT scheme. “
Mr. Charlse said the whole essence of the initiative is to help educate the public on the role of SSNIT as a trust that has been established for all workers and not just public sector workers to help reduce poverty among the aged.
” The whole essence of this is to reduce poverty among the aged. The SSNIT scheme was established to provide pensions for all workers so we have no justification to focus on only employees or salaried workers, it is on that note that we came out that let’s Intensify the education out there to understand that the SSNIT scheme is for every worker.”
Mr. Charlse added that self employed workers who joins the scheme will enjoy all benefits that their counterparts in the public sector enjoy including monthly payments and yearly increment.
“SSNIT is not an investment scheme, it is an insurance scheme. So these self employed workers are coming to insure their income so that on the event they old or they are declared permanently unfit to work again by qualified medical doctors, then SSNIT will start paying them monthly pensions like their their counterparts in the public sector.”
“Once we put you on monthly pension, every month you are guaranteed to receive this pensions on every a third Thursday of the month. Beyond that, every year also, we increase the amount you receive as pension.”
One can join the scheme by registering at any SSNIT office or at a nearby SSNIT mobile service in the community with Ghana card as the identification requirement.
The system has also been made simple for contributors to pay using mobile money service using the short code *711*9# and select option 4 to make payments.
By: Simon Agana Blessing/mywordfmonline.com