The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has taken its Self-Employed Enrolment Drive (SEED) initiative to Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
The initiative focuses on extending pension coverage and social security protection to self-employed individuals and informal sector workers in the country, aiming to reduce old age poverty.
For the past weeks, SSNIT has been touring the country to raise awareness on SEED through its new enrolment exercise dubbed Ops-A-Thon.
Already, the Trust has been to Wa, Techiman, Tarkwa and Koforidua to encourage the self-employed to enrol on SSNIT’s SEED.
The exercise forms part of the Trust’s ongoing effort to sensitise self-employed persons on the benefits and value the SSNIT Scheme offers its Members and encourage workers to enrol.
Under the Ops-A-Thon initiative, SSNIT staff have mounted tents at various business enclaves, markets and walking through some principal streets of selected towns in the regions, holding placards and distributing flyers to encourage self-employed individuals to enrol in the SSNIT Scheme.
Some of the placards displayed had messages such as: “The only scheme that provides you with life insurance at no extra cost,” “Bring 13.5% of your income and get up to 60% of your income”, “Join SSNIT and get free National Health Insurance,” among others. These were accompanied by brass band music and one-on-one education on the benefits of SSNIT.
Addressing the media in Koforidua, the General Manager in charge of Operations at SSNIT, Mr. Kingsley Adjei-Manu noted that the self-employed also deserve pension when they have retired just like their counterparts in the formal sector.
“So far, we have registered about 120,000 self-employed and informal sector workers. We aim to gradually use pension to reduce and eliminate old age poverty. If we are able to increase the numbers over time, it means that lots more self-employed persons will retire and receive monthly pensions for life”, Mr. Adjei-Manu said.
He explained that highlighting the benefits of the SSNIT Scheme to self-employed persons is important as it would ensure public understanding of the superiority of the SSNIT Scheme and garner support, which would result in more workers in the informal sector joining the SSNIT Scheme. “On average, SSNIT pays more than GH¢400 million as monthly pension to retirees”, he added
Operation A-Thon is a nationwide sensitization activity. In the coming days, other regional capitals are expected to host the event.
In May 2023, when SSNIT launched SEED in Kumasi, about 13,000 self-employed persons had already enrolled in the Scheme.
Currently, about 120,000 have so far enrolled.
This significant increase in enrolment is largely attributed to the value the Scheme offers its members, which includes Old Age Pension, Invalidity Pension, and Survivors Lump Sum.
