SSNIT withholds GH¢480m ‘ghosts’ payments

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has withheld GH¢480 million, corresponding to 19,100 pensioners who failed to avail themselves to be biometrically authenticated.

It said it was ready to refund the money once those persons came up.

The Director-General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, who made this known in response to a question at a press conference in Accra yesterday, said the pension scheme was such that SSNIT was obligated to pay a pensioner until death.

Death

He said if a person passed on before the age of 72 for those under PNDC Law 247 and 75 for those under the National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766), the Trust had to pay some money to his or her survivors.

“But if you live beyond those years, then we don’t have to pay anything to your survivors and every month, our operation is that we pay monies directly into your bank account.

“So what we need to do is to make sure that we find a way to ascertain that we are actually paying legitimate pensioners. So we asked our cherished pensioners every year to let us know that they are alive,” he said.

That, the SSNIT boss said, was done by asking them to report to the SSNIT officer to biometrically authenticate them and that it was mindful of the fact that there were people who might not have mobility challenges and then could not be able to visit a SSNIT office.

Arrangements

In view of that, he said, there were alternative arrangements where “if you call us we would come to where you are and we would biometrically authenticate you”.

He said for people who had not come to authenticate themselves, “whose money we have withheld, we have about GH¢480 million so far”.

“There’s GH¢480 million that we could have paid out that we have not paid.

“This is because those people to whom it belongs have not come back to tell us that they are alive. So that is what we call ghost pensions,” he emphasised and that “as and when they resurrect, we stand ready to pay them,” he said.

Background

In 2014, members of the SSNIT pension scheme, including pensioners, were requested to register biometrically.

The exercise, which was organised in phases in consultation with employers, aimed at collecting biometric information of existing contributors and generating 13 alphanumeric social security numbers for those with eight-digit numbers.

The project was also designed to collect additional information on existing policyholders of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and those registered with the National Identification Authority (NIA).

The biometric data will facilitate quick and easy verification of the identities of SSNIT contributors in future.

SSNIT is a statutory public Trust charged under the National Pensions Act, 2008 Act 766 with the administration of Ghana’s Basic National Social Security Scheme. Its mandate is to cater for the First Tier of the Three-Tier Pension Scheme. The Trust is currently the largest non-bank financial institution in Ghana.

The primary responsibility of the Trust is to replace part of lost income of workers in Ghana due to Old Age, Invalidity or Death of a member where dependants receive lump sum payment. It is also responsible for the payment of Emigration benefit to a non-Ghanaian member who is leaving Ghana permanently.

The Pension Scheme as administered by SSNIT has an active membership of over 1.8 million as of April, 2023 with over 235,617 pensioners who regularly receive their monthly pensions from SSNIT.

The Trust was established in 1972 under NRCD 127 to administer the National Social Security Scheme. Prior to 1972, the scheme was administered jointly by the then Department of Pensions and the State Insurance Corporation.

The Trust administered the Social Security Scheme as a Provident Fund Scheme until 1991 when it was converted to a Social Insurance Pension Scheme then governed by the PNDC Law 247.

The scheme in Ghana was reformed by an Act of Parliament, Act 766 of 2008, and was implemented in January 2010 to replace all pension schemes in Ghana, including Cap 30.

In 2014, the National Pensions (Amendment) Act 883 was passed to amend portions of Act 766.