Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, the Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has charged managers of businesses to provide the right information on the scheme to encourage more people, especially the informal sector to sign onto the scheme.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang made the call at the closing ceremony of a three-day Annual Operations Conference organised by SSNIT in Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
According to the Director-General, out of the about 13 million persons in the informal sector, only 1.7 million people are active members. He thus, iterated the need to add on more people to benefit from the pension scheme.
“What that tells us clearly is that, our approach has not worked well enough. Whilst I acknowledge the journey of innovation, improved service delivery and general transformation we have all been on these last few years, it appears we need to do far more”.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang
The Director-General stated that, in spite of the 56-year existence of the Trust and the gains the Trust has made over the past five years, a lot more needed to be done to get more people on the scheme.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang regretted the failure of the Trust to articulate the value of the Scheme and the generous benefits it offered to workers especially those in the informal sector to secure their future.
“if there could be a reorientation of mindsets and a change to our approach to business from a business that has traditionally relied almost solely on the law to operate and to enforce compliance to one that is concerned with building and maintaining lifelong relationships, then the Trust could make strides. ”
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang
Speaking on the theme, the Deputy Director-General of Operations and Benefits, Laurette Korkor Otchere, on her part, noted that the sustainability of the SSNIT Scheme is essential and must be the bedrock on which the Trust operates, she added that it could be achieved by leveraging on modern and reliable technology.
According to her, the use of data analytics, which allow managers to generate real-time performance reports, as opposed to the previous manual reports that are generated, has helped to improve the performance of the Divisions under her directorate.
“The directorate continued to use the Results-Based monitoring dashboards to monitor all operational activities with a focus on the impact on the sustainability of the Scheme.”
Laurette Korkor Otchere
The Deputy Director-General of Operations commended her team for embracing the new and improved work culture.
The annual conference themed “Ensuring sustainability of the SSNIT Scheme, through effective and efficient operational business processes; leveraging modern and reliable technology”, brought together 107 top Management, Departmental heads as well as Area and Branch Managers from across the country.
The purpose of the conference is to enable participants to discuss the performance of the Trust during the previous year and the first three quarters of 2021 and to enable them adopt strategies to improve operational output of the scheme in 2022.
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