Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, has disclosed that the Trust has successfully recovered GH¢154 million through the legal pursuit of employers who neglected to fulfill their obligations of paying their employees' contributions during the initial half of 2023.

Dr. Ofori-Tenkorang indicated that based on available data and projections, the Trust is making steady progress towards achieving its objectives for the entirety of the year.

Speaking during a session with the media on the sidelines of the 2023 SSNIT Employers Breakfast Meeting held in Koforidua, Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang highlighted that SSNIT is in the process of broadening its scope to encompass individuals within the informal sector.

“Our goal and objective is to ensure that we do not miss any pension payments to people who rely on us as their only source of income for their livelihood. We want to expand, and that is why we are going out there to do the tough work and convince the self-employed to join SSNIT” he stated.

“The highest-paid SSNIT pensioner was a self-employed person who was not an employee of anyone and used to earn GH¢100,000 a month” he revealed.

He advised businesses to make SSNIT contributions on time in order to avoid prosecution, which he claimed was frequently the Trust's last resort.

“The SSNIT law states that it is the employer’s obligation to ensure that SSNIT payments are remitted to SSNIT. If employers do this diligently, then we would not have to send compliance officers after them. However, due to some misunderstanding or sheer devilishness, some employers fail to remit their contributions to SSNIT.”

He concluded that if after repeated reminders, reluctant employers still do not make contributions, then they would have no choice but to take them to court.

“Some of these prosecutions have led us to retrieve GH¢154 million in the first half of the year” he added.