SSNIT launches Mobile Service Week in Sunyani
The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has launched its Mobile Service Week in Sunyani, the Bono Regional capital yesterday, with a call on the informal sector workers to consider joining the SSNIT scheme in order to guarantee their future.
The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, who made the call, noted that SSNIT was a reliable and resilient entity backed by law to protect and safeguard the interests of Ghanaian workers.
He explained that SSNIT was engaged in viable and prudent investments yielding profitable income which guarantee its sustainability, and called on the self-employed to come on board to build a vibrant pension industry for the country.
Mr Baffour-Awuah said although social security was recognised as a fundamental human right, its coverage had not been encouraging, particularly in the informal sector.
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He commended SSNIT management for the various initiatives and drives aimed at enrolling the self-employed, urging them not to rest on their oars.
The Director General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, in an address, said currently about 60 per cent of 3.2 million workers in the formal sector workers are covered under the SSNIT scheme.
The Director General of SSNIT noted that over the years, many of the self-employed have assumed that the SSNIT scheme was primarily designed for formal sector workers only.
This mistaken belief, he said, accounted for the 1.8 per cent active members on the Scheme out of which estimated 9.9 million working population were inadvertently denied their rights to social security.
The government through SSNIT, he noted, had been intensifying public education while ensuring that the public was well-informed and knowledgeable of their rights to social media.
The SSNIT management has also rolled out the Self Employed Enrolment Drive campaign to encourage the self-employed, whether formal or informal, to enrol onto the SSNIT scheme.
A total of 74 vantage locations, Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said, have been selected across the 16 regions to provide services to members and clients with ease.
Services being offered include the issuance of statements of account, registration of employers and workers, particularly self-employed persons, and benefits processing, among others.
The Bono Regional Minister, Justina Owusu Banahene, on her part, urged SSNIT to work hard to change the perception that SSNIT benefits were low as compared to someone doing their own businesses.