As part of measures to ensure an accurate pensioners payroll, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), introduced a new measure, especially for pensioners who are above 72 years to physically verify yearly to make them eligible to continue to receive their pension benefits.
They have as a scheme successfully managed to save a whopping 327 million cedis that would have been paid to pensioners largely believed to be ghost pensioners.
The decision to introduce the measure came as a result of the need for the protection of the SSNIT payroll and the desire to ensure only deserving pensioners having worked for several years are the only ones to benefit from the payments.
Speaking to Journalists Tuesday, on the sidelines of a TUC/SSNIT Upper East Regional engagement the Director General of SSNIT, John Ofori-Tenkorang explained that only validated pensioners will be paid adding the days of paying pension stipends to ghost pensioners are over.
“The savings result from withholding pension payments that would have probably gone to deceased pensioners, what we call ghost pensioners, comes about in this way. Under PNDC Law 247, which is one of the laws that we are now paying pensions on. When a pensioner achieves a ripe old age of 72 years and the pensioner is deceased, then SSNIT is not obligated to make any more payments to the survivors. If the pensioner passes away before that time, then the unexpired pension which is the difference between the age at which he passed away and 72, the pensions that we would have paid in that period would have to be calculated and paid to the survivors.
So, we noticed that those above 72, when die, many people do not report and we decided to introduce a biometric verification to authenticate that you are alive. So, the people that haven’t gone through this exercise, those are the peoples whose pensions have we stopped and that has accumulated over time to about 327 million Ghana cedis,” the SSNIT boss explained.
On why the take home for some workers following retirement is low with others taking monthly stipends as low as 300 cedis, he explained that calculations are done based on the individual’s contribution while in active service.
“The SSNIT scheme is an insurance scheme. So just like most people understand how insurance work, you go and pay the premium on the asset based on its value, so is the SSNIT scheme.
You come to us to declare your income and we ask you to pay 11% of that income as a premium and depending on how long you’ve been insuring with us, you get a certain replacement factor.
If you insure for about 35 years and above, you stand to get a replacement value of 60%. If you’ve done the minimum of 15 years, you stand to get 37 and a half percent and that is why some may get 300 because they have insured an income of 400 cedis per month” he explained.
