Adnan Adams Mohammed
Starting January next year, employers who submit their employees pension contributions reports without Ghana card ID numbers risk being penalized, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has said.
The Trust specified that, contributions from members without without Ghana card would be rejected and subsequently penalized for delayed payment of contributions.
Government has began migrating all existing national identification numbers onto the National Identification card, also known as Ghana card. In line of this, SSNIT on June 28, 2021, began processes to merge all SSNIT numbers to the Ghana card. The merger is also in compliance with Regulation 7 (1) of the National Identity Register Regulations, 2012, L.I. 2111 and a directive from the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA).
“We communicated and said that by January 2022, you cannot submit contribution reports without NIA numbers”, Director-General of SSNIT, Dr. Ofori Tenkorang has said at an employers’ breakfast meeting organised by his outfit, last week. “And if you do submit the reports without NIA numbers, that report will be rejected. And the payments if not made on time, you know what it means, it attracts penalties and so on and so forth.”
He added that “we have given a transition period from July to December to get this done. I am imploring you to make sure, each time you are submitting your contributing report, please check to make sure that every employee on the contribution report has their Ghana Card number also on that report. I beg you, let’s get that done way before the end of this year so that come January we are not going to have any of these problems”.
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The intended merger is expected to improve the ease of doing business with the Trust by enabling a convenient means to allowjjj members to use one card, that is the Ghana Card, for all transactions.
So far over one million SSNIT contributors have had their unique scheme numbers merged with the Ghana Card since the start of the exercise.
Although the numbers are encouraging, Dr Tenkorang urged persons who are yet to pull through to do so soon before the grace period elapses.
