The Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, has disclosed that the Trust was able to retrieve GH¢154 million from the prosecution of employers who were reluctant to pay the contributions of their employees in the first half of 2023.
He urged employers to be diligent in paying their employees’ SSNIT contributions to avoid prosecution, which he said is often the Trust’s last resort.
“The SSNIT law states that it is the employer’s obligation to ensure that SSNIT payments are remitted to SSNIT. If employers do this diligently, then we would not have to send compliance officers after them. However, due to some misunderstanding or sheer devilishness, some employers fail to remit their contributions to SSNIT.”
“If, after repeated reminders, reluctant employers still do not make contributions, then we have no choice but to take them to court. Some of these prosecutions have led us to retrieve GH¢154 million in the first half of the year.”
According to Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang, available data and projections show that the Trust is on track to meet its targets by the end of the year.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of the 2023 SSNIT Employers Breakfast Meeting in Koforidua, Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang also indicated that SSNIT is expanding its operations to cover people in the informal sector.
“Our goal and objective is to ensure that we do not miss any pension payments to people who rely on us as their only source of income for their livelihood. We want to expand, and that is why we are going out there to do the tough work and convince the self-employed to join SSNIT.”
“We want the self-employed to know that SSNIT is a better retirement plan to join if they want to ensure a better and more comfortable retirement. The highest-paid SSNIT pensioner was a self-employed person who was not an employee of anyone and used to earn GH¢100,000 a month.”