The government has said that the merging of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and the National Insurance Authority (NIA) numbers will eliminate the cost associated with printing SSNIT biometric cards.
At a press briefing yesterday, the Director General of SSNIT, Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, explained: “When we were producing the SSNIT card, it was costing us about GHC7, 000. When we started doing the biometric and issuing cards, on card alone, SSNIT spends close to about $10million in issuing cards but now we are going get that for free.”
“The things like support, we were spending $2.9million dollars a year to support our biometric system and other systems we have. Now with the Fees and Charges Act, the recurring cost will be about GHC2million a year for verification, data update, records update among other things and that is a significant savings,” he added.
Convenience
SSNIT and NIA say SSNIT’s members can now use one card, that is the Ghana Card, for multiple transactions, meaning there is no need to carry two cards when one can do the job.
This implies that members don’t have to carry a separate card for SSNIT transactions, the organisations said.
The merger also ties in with the Trust’s quest to improve the ease with which members and Clients do business with SSNIT.
For instance, nominated dependents of deceased members will easily be identified. This will help avoid unnecessary delays and reduce fraud and impersonation in processing and paying survivors’ benefits.
The adoption is also in fulfilment of a directive from the National Pensions Regulatory Authority.
The Trust has deployed two platforms for members of the SSNIT scheme to merge their SSNIT and NIA numbers. These are the use of: USSD (short code) *711*9#
The SSNIT website (www.ssnit.org.gh).
After the merger
Every activity that one could perform with the SSNIT number can now be done with the Ghana Card or NIA number.
From January 2022, members who fail to merge their numbers will not be able to transact business with the Trust.
“This is because, the Ghana Card will be the only accepted identification for Members to transact business with SSNIT. This also means Members cannot apply for their benefits,” he said.
The merger will not affect payment of pensions to those on the pension payroll. However, pensioners who are due to renew their pensioners’ certificate must provide the Ghana Card or NIA number for identification.
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