SSNIT saves 18.1 million Ghana cedis after deleting 8,366 ghost names

 The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) has said measures introduced by in February 2018 to delete ghost names from the pension payroll have yielded positive results.

The trust had, as of August 24, 2018, saved GH¢18.1 million following the deletion of 8,366 ghost names.

The amount is currently lodged in a designated account at the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

In an exclusive interview on the deactivation exercise in Accra on Tuesday, the Director-General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, said the names of 43,618 pensioners were earmarked to be deleted in the event they failed to go through the verification exercise.

According to data available to 35,252 pensioners verified their accounts through biometric process.  Dr Ofori-Tenkorang speaking on publicity of the process said, there were periodic public announcements urging pensioners to visit any SSNIT office for biometric verification.

He explained that the public education campaign went on for six months before the deactivation exercise began and the Trust was able to save 18.1 million Ghana cedis.

Dr Ofori- Tenkorang disclosed how failure to verify various accounts on the pay roll aided in the deactivation of these accounts. He said SSNIT was saving an average of GH¢2.6 million a month following the introduction of the verification exercise

As a follow up to the exercise, he disclosed that the trust had written to all local banks to return pension money that had not been claimed six months after payment and placed in a special account created at the Bank of Ghana.

Another measure introduced to curb the incidence of having ghost names on the trust’s pension payroll was that all pensioners were required to authenticate their accounts once a year after attaining age 72, he said.

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