Public Affairs Manager at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Mr. Charles AKwei Garshong has encouraged workers to negotiate for better basic income components of their salaries which outweigh their allowances.
This according to Mr. Garshong would enable individuals to have better pension benefits.
He noted that most employers would prefer paying low basic income and higher allowances to employees to avoid paying higher social security contributions for employees which is 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 Enrollment 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 is as a result of the lack of understanding of how retirement benefits were computed.
Mr. Garshong, therefore, encouraged workers to regularly check on their mandatory contributions to ensure that employers did not short-change them when they retire.
Mr. Charles Akwei Garshong 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 underpayment 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 added.
