Some workers paid ?46,000 as monthly salary

Tema, Nov 10, GNA - The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) on Thursday expressed concern about some employers who under declare their workers salaries.

It said documents submitted by some employers to the SSNIT show that some employees receive as low as 46,000 cedis as their monthly salaries. Top officials of the Trust who disclosed this at a day's seminar organized for employers in Fishing, Shipping, Forwarding and Clearing businesses at Tema however, expressed doubts about the declaration and advised employers to cease such declarations because it eventually go against the workers concerned.

It was under the theme "Improving compliance and data management through collaboration with the employer".

Mr T. L. Agawu, General Manager in charge of Operations of SSNIT, noted that employers do that deliberately in order to evade payment of the 12-and-half percent obligatory pension when workers go on retirement.

He said when this is done workers would be at disadvantage because on their retirement the document before SSNIT would be used to calculate their pension and they would have nothing to go home with.

Mr Agawu therefore appealed to workers to show interest in their contributions by periodically going to any of the SSNIT offices to demand their statements on their contributions and if possible challenge it where they detect a mistake.

Touching on the students' loan scheme, the General Manager said the government's new scheme is going to be such that it would not attract guarantors as the students would guarantee for themselves.

He stated that the current scheme that would soon phase out has not been a failure because it supported a lot of students and that the outstanding loans have not been written off.

Guarantors are therefore reminded to redouble their efforts to ensure that those they guaranteed honour their obligations else it would be deducted from their contributions before going on pension. Mr George M. Akyeampong, the Deputy Branch Manager of the SSNIT at the Tema Harbour, advised workers against conniving with their employers to declare low salaries else they have themselves to blame.

Ms Eva Amagashie, Deputy Head of Public Affairs, said plans are underway to extend their services to cover the informal sector. She said the SSNIT, which was the first to convert provident fund into a pension scheme, has not performed poorly because most African countries come to under study their operations to incorporate it into theirs.

Ms Amagashie promised contributors of quality services because structures have been put in place to address all anomalies that hindered inefficiency.