The breakfast meeting, which was held under the theme “Providing Pension for All: The Role of the Employer,” aims to encourage employers in good standing to continue their good work and to encourage others who are not in good standing to follow their example.

This is the fourth meeting for employers, following three previous meetings in Accra, Kumasi, and Takoradi, where the management of SSNIT met with stakeholders, both public and private, who promptly and consistently pay their contributions.

Several heads of institutions in good standing from various districts in the region attended the meeting.

In his address to the gathering, the Director-General of SSNIT, Dr. John Ofori Tenkorang, commended the employers for their continued commitment to the scheme and urged them to be ambassadors to others.

“We are having this engagement today because we have realized the need to get into close contact with the people who pay the most money into SSNIT, and those people are the employers,” he said. “You contribute the matching funds, which is actually much higher than twice the amount we deduct from the employee. In order for our scheme to be strong and grow, we need to be close to you and have a conversation to get your honest feedback, which will allow us to become better.”

“We are at the forefront, but we do not know whether what we are doing is actually serving you. So, we welcome your honest feedback. We started this engagement in 2019, but then COVID-19 came in 2020. We held another one in 2021 and another in 2022. We are trying to move it around the country, but this is the first time we are doing it in Koforidua. We have already done Takoradi, Accra, and Kumasi, and we will continue to move it around since our employers are scattered all over the country. These past engagements have been very fruitful in helping us change some of the ways we do things as a responsible scheme. We cherish this relationship and we put a high premium on it.”

Dr. Tenkorang added, “The cross-section of employers gathered here deserve all the commendations because you have taken the future of all your employees very seriously. If every employer was behaving like you are doing, I would say that we could even cut our operational costs at SSNIT in half because we would not need an army of compliance officers to be coming to enforce compliance. At the end of the month, you know what you are supposed to do and you do it without fail. So, we thank you for that, and I am hoping that other employers will emulate your exemplary behavior.”