The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has organized a stakeholder engagement as part of efforts to educate members of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) in the Upper East Region on their tier-one contributions and the related benefits.
The Director–General of SSNIT, Dr. John Ofori Tenkorang explained that the initiative was aimed at correcting the many false narratives peddled with regard to the scheme and its benefits.
According to Dr. Tenkorang, the contributions of a member on the tier–one scheme at the end of the month, determines how much one receives as pension benefits at one’s retirement. He said if members want more pension benefits then, they would have to contribute more.
Whilst admitting that some retirees receive as low as Ghs 300.00, Dr. Tenkorang stated, “it is also true that there are people on the same pension scheme who are earning about Ghs 100,000.00 if not more.”
“What the narrative leaves out is the fact that the SSNIT scheme is an insurance scheme so just like everybody understands how insurance works, you go and you declare to an insurance company the asset that you have that you believe is valuable to you and then you pay the requisite premium on that asset and when the time comes for you to make claims and you go and make claims on the asset that you went to insure,” he added.
Mr. Tenkorang argued that there is always a replacement value that is always added to the asset where the insurance company will argue that, they will not pay the full cost of the asset but can take some percentage of the asset and so is the SSNIT scheme.
For his part, the Deputy General Secretary of Trade Union Congress, John Baffoe Ansah appreciated the gesture by SSNIT, noting that, the core mandates of the Congress are to protect its members and to address the challenges associated with their contributions. Thus, the engagement came at the right time.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1 MHz|Kennedy Zongbil|Bolgatanga|Ghana
