SSNIT Rot Must Be Investigated

We support every effort by the government to chase all those who have contributed to the massive rot at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).

There is an ongoing investigation into a $66 million software contract that the SSNIT management during the administration of the Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) awarded to a private company to develop a platform to help in networking all branches of SSNIT across the country.

It is even turning out that the contract sum has reach around $72 million but still the system cannot function as expected.

We are concerned about how a hardware retailer with zero experience in developing a complex enterprise software system won a multi-million dollar SSNIT contract to furnish the organisation with a full-spectrum, so-called, ‘operational business suite,' a system, which is supposed to encompass every layer of the organisation’s operational activities?

We are hearing that the software was supposed to be a turnkey project, but as we sit here, the machine is sitting somewhere in Malaysia.

The rationale behind the whole project was to reduce the amount of paper work involved in processing pensions and cut the time spent by the already-stressed retiree, but it has rather come to worsen the overhead cost of SSNIT.

How did that happen? To make matters worse, SSNIT does not have copyright to the software after spending so much on the whole project.

This is the rot Mr Mahama and his appointees bequeathed Ghanaians.

The situation at SSNIT is messy. Contributions continue to go down and the trust's main assets have been disposed off.

Do you remember the recent disposal of SSNIT's most valuable assets in the form of landed properties in expensive locations in Accra by the Ernest Thompson-led management?

They eventually auctioned those properties to themselves. What benefit did it bring to the pensioner?

On October 9 at the launch of the NPP Manifesto for Election 2016, then Vice Presidential nominee of then opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Alhaji Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, highlighted the problems at SSNIT and warned the current course of SSNIT was going to leave pensioners in a dire situation.

“Our pensioners are under threat, currently the financial viability of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust is in question,” we recall the current Vice President as predicting and added that the World Bank, in its 2016 report of governance of SSNIT, stated that “the actuarial valuation shows that the fund will become a cash flow negative in 2019 and all assets will be used up by 2031.”

“At this point, the benefits would have to match the inflows and will lead to very significant cuts in the benefit for current pensioners. This is the World Bank telling us that SSNIT is collapsing and that would result in a cut in pensions.”

In DAILY GUIDE's opinion, we should not see this disclosure as one of the usual issues where we mumble and grumble and then it comes to nothing, letting some people somewhere heave a sigh of relief and then hop on a jet to Yankee or Europe or Dubai for another steak and lobster holiday.

When will the bad guys ever suffer in this land? Damn!