Ghana's social security saves $8 million (GH¢43 million) after clearing pension payroll

The Trust in February last year began an exercise to clean the pension’s payroll of ghost names in collaboration with the banks, which monitored dormant accounts over time and terminated those it deemed ghost pensioners.

The Director-General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, made the revelation while speaking at an educational forum organised by SSNIT in collaboration with the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to discuss social security issues, particularly on pensions and benefit computations.

It was aimed at promoting knowledge of the SSNIT Scheme, empowering organised labour as peer educators for the Trust and demystifying controversial issues surrounding the computation of benefits to contributors.

According to Dr Ofori-Tenkorang, cleaning the pensions' payroll formed part of the prudent internal and external management and cost-saving practices aimed at building a robust, self-sustaining Scheme.

He stressed on the fact that sustainability of the scheme is very essential, and urged all institutions to ensure that the Trust runs efficiently and effectively.

He said the external actuarial valuation suggested that the contribution rate necessary to pay benefits over the next 50 years and to accumulate assets representing three years of total expenditure is around 19.2%, adding that, “there are no myths surrounding benefits computation," and that pensions are direct reflections of salaries from which contributions are paid, saying: “With the SSNIT Pension Scheme, what you put in is what you get out.”

SSNIT has a total of 1,551,718 active contributors as of March 2019, and 205,094 pensioners on its payroll with the highest paid pensioner receiving GH¢55,899.57 a month, while the minimum pension paid is GH¢300.00.

Last year, the Trust spent GH¢2.5 billion on benefits payments.

GH¢230 million is being spent on funding pensions payment to over 200,000 pensioners monthly.