The Ghana Card is essential in saving the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) millions of dollars in the long term, Dr. John Ofori Tenkorang, Director-General of SSNIT, has said.
According to him, when the card is eventually synced to capture the biodata of all working Ghanaians and their survivors, it will save the Trust from losing money.
He said only 2 million of an estimated 10 million working Ghanaians—in both the formal and informal sectors—are active SSNIT contributors and have received biometric identity cards, stressing that attempts are being made to enrol the remaining 8 million.
Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang estimated that registering and integrating all 10 million working Ghanaians with at least one survivor into the SSNIT system using their national ID cards might save up to $126 million in the long run.
“We have been able to issue only 2 million SSNIT Cards to our contributors; this means that we will save some $56 million now that the GhanaCard is the sole biometric card to be used to register the remaining 8 million working Ghanaians onto the SSNIT system; that aside, about $70 million would be saved if each survivor of the 10 million potential contributors uses the GhanaCard. This would save SSNIT $126 million overall, in the long term,”
“I think this is the point that the Vice President was trying to make, so it should not be taken out of context. If you think progressively about the benefits of the GhanaCard to SSNIT in the long term, you would appreciate that what the Vice President said was apt,” Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang told journalists at the 2022 TUC/SSNIT Regional Engagement programme in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region on Tuesday, August, 9.
The GhanaCard has been the only identification recognized by SSNIT since July 1.
This is in accordance with Regulation 7(1) of the National Identity Register Regulations, 2022, L. I 2111, which requires the use of the GhanaCard as identification for “transactions pertaining to individuals in respect of pensions” and “transactions that have social security implications.”