The self-employed and workers in the informal sector have been encouraged to join the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Pension Scheme to guarantee them retirement income to take care of their needs when they can no longer work. Mr Charles Akwei Garshong, Public Affairs Manager of SSNIT, who gave the encouragement, cautioned the self-employed against preferring treasury bills to SSNIT Pension Scheme, saying ‘Investing your money in treasury bills will not yield you more returns than what SSNIT will be paying you during your retirement.’ He said apart from regular annual increases on pension allowances, SSNIT also paid any contributor, who is declared unfit (invalidity pension) to continue working, monthly pension allowances no matter his or her age before being declared unfit to continue working. He was speaking at a sensitisation workshop for media practitioners in Tamale on the SSNIT Pension Scheme to equip them with information to help create content to encourage the self-employed and workers in the informal sector to join the SSNIT Pension Scheme. Participants were drawn from the Northern and Upper East Regions. The sensitisation workshop was in line with the Self-Employed Enrolment Drive (SEED) of SSNIT, which focuses on extending pension coverage to the self-employed and workers in the informal sector. Statistics show that about 85 per cent of the country’s economy is informal, comprising 6.7 million self-employed persons from a total working population of 9.9 million. However, only about 34,000 active SSNIT contributors are self-employed. This necessitated the SEED, which was a repackaging of the tier one pension to provide social protection to such workers (self-employed and workers in the informal sector) by providing them with a regular source of income during retirement. He reiterated that SSNIT Pension Scheme was not created for just public and formal sector workers but all workers in the country including the self-employed and informal sector workers. He said SSNIT was focused on reducing old age poverty, which arose when people did not have pensions to rely on, hence the need for the self-employed and workers in the informal sector to join the pension scheme.
Source: Ghana News Agency
