Govt owes SSNIT ¢370m between October and March

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) owes about 370 million cedis in first tier pensions contributions of Public Sector workers.

This is the outstanding amount government owes the State Pensions Trust - representing six-months of contributions between October last year and March this year.

The 2012/2013 Auditor General’s Report cited government for failing to pay over 800 million cedis in the contributions. The amount, in addition to arrears for the first 9 months of 2014, have been cleared - leaving outstanding arrears of 6 months of contributions.

The General Manager for Benefits at SSNIT, Leslie Arde-Acquah however says there is no cause for alarm.

“Government is the largest employer in this country and so government’s social security contributions may be in the region of 50 to 60 million Ghana cedis every month and that’s a huge amount of money.

“In fact let me state categorically; I mean ask the businessmen, government is the best debtor that you can have because it would pay no matter what. Government pays its contributions but there is a delay in the payment which obviously affects our operations.

“But we put pressure on government to ensure that government pays us what is due us. And let me tell you for a fact that, in most instances government has converted its debts into bonds and we’re getting the interests from these bonds every month,” he noted.

“He admits the arrears put some pressure on SSNIT’s finances but this is quelled by the guaranteed payment by government.

“I won’t say we’re not that worried. We’re worried because there is no immediate cash to invest. But we are also not too worried because government is not like a private man whose company would collapse and we’ll not find him or we cannot sell his properties or the properties may not even make up for the debt.

“Yes it puts some pressure on us because a scheme is financed by investment income and so if you don’t have money to invest, you’ll not have the investment income to support it. But what do you do under that circumstance? It may sound funny but I would prefer chasing private employers who can run away with workers contributions than chasing government who would always be there,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, government has initiated the process of implementing a new mechanism to address the late payment of public workers contributions to SSNIT. It has resolved to now pay upfront, the gross instead of net salaries of the workers which delays the payment of the contributions.