Mr Charles Akwei Garshong, Public Affairs Manager, Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has urged workers to negotiate for a basic income component of their salaries which outweighs their allowances. Doing so, he said, would enable them to have better pension benefits. He observed that most employers would prefer paying low basic income and higher allowances to employees to avoid paying higher social security contribution for employees which was calculated on basic income. 'If the basic is small, it simply means your pension will be small because when we are calculating your pension, we will not take into consideration the allowances that was declared for you,' he said. Mr Garshong made the remarks during a media engagement on the Self-Employed Enrolment Drive (SEED) which is an initiative aimed at registering more self-employed and informal workers onto the SSNIT pension scheme. Registered contributors are to declare a monthly salary, pay 13.5 per cent of the declared salary either on a monthly quarterly, semi- annual or annual basis. Currently self-employed persons make up only 1.8 per cent of about 1.9 million SSNIT contributors as of April 2023. He noted that the misconception associated with the retirement benefits of contributors had been caused by the lack of understanding of how retirement benefits were computed. He encouraged workers to regularly check on their mandatory contributions to ensure that employers did not shortchange them when they retired. The Public Affairs Manager urged contributors not to hesitate on drawing the attention of SSNIT when they identify any discrepancies such as non-payment of contributions by employers or under payment of contributions based on declared salaries of employees. 'While in service check your statements periodically. Once everything is correct and you retire today, you have within two weeks to get your pension,' he said.

Source: Ghana News Agency