Mr. Alhassan Yakubu Fuseini, the Tamale Zonal Manager of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), has revealed that workers need to be educated on how pension schemes work.
According to Mr. Fuseini, learning, knowledge, and best practices needed to effectively chart the course of the pensions sector in Ghana are missing in the pensions discourse.
“It will be critical for the pension sector actors including workers and employers to understand how Ghana’s pension sector works, and how it can be scaled up to reach more people.”
Mr. Alhassan Yakubu Fuseini
The Zonal Manager made this statement while addressing stakeholders from the formal and informal sectors at the Regional Pensions Learning Alliance meeting held in Bolgatanga.
The stakeholder engagement was held under the theme, ‘Driving Pension Penetration in Northern Ghana Through Learning and Information Sharing: The Role of Pension Sector Actors’.
Mr. Fuseini revealed that the NPRA plans to broaden its nationwide coverage from its current three (3) per cent to forty (40) per cent by 2026.
As part of this agenda, Mr. Fuseini disclosed that the NPRA plans to enrol about eleven (11) million workers onto its pensions scheme.
According to NPRA’s Tamale Zonal Manager, “we are in times that the informal sector pension contribution is low”, as compared to the contribution from the formal sector.
The stakeholder engagement
As disclosed by Mr. Fuseini, the purpose of the meeting was to help create a pension sector in the Upper East Region that would enhance the provision of quality pension services.
It is estimated that about 85 per cent of Ghana’s workforce are in the informal sector. However, only one per cent out of the total informal workers contribute to a particular pension scheme, Mr. Fuseini said.
This, he stated, the NPRA considers as trivial and indicated that the meeting would foster sharing of experiences that would stimulate peer lessons among pension sector actors.
The Regional Manager gave the assurance that the NPRA would continue to partner with stakeholders to ensure the safety of pension funds.
This, he believes, would help to guarantee, and secure income security for all workers during retirement.
On his part, Mr Kwaku Appiah Twumasi, the Bolgatanga Branch Manager of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), stated that “if you regularly check [pension contribution], you will know where the issues are so we can address them”.
“Some people have never checked their statements for about 20 to 30 years, and when they are near retirement, that they realise the employer had not been paying their contributions.”
Mr Kwaku Appiah Twumasi
Also, Mr Abdulai Abdul-Rahaman, the Corporate Affairs Officer of the Temale Zonal Office, emphasized the need for workers to regularly update their information at SSNIT.
“If you do not update your records, and eventually retire, you will have challenges accessing the funds.
“For instance, if your date of birth is not correctly captured, it will be an issue. Some people have different dates of births with SSNIT and the employer.”
Mr Abdulai Abdul-Rahaman
Mr. Abdul-Rahaman said SSNIT is a human institution which could make mistakes, hence the “need to update our records regularly. Once there is a genuine mistake and their attention is drawn to it, they can correct it”.
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