The MOMO platform will be linked to the trust’s payment systems as part of moves by the trust to make payment flexible and convenient for employers.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, the Director-General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, said the project would be fully rolled out before the last quarter of 2019.

“We are liaising with the telcos to roll out the programme nationwide. The only innovation here is to make the payment of contributions very flexible for employers, especially those with employees numbering less than 20,” he explained.

He said the existing methods of paying employee contributions were still in operation.

Assurance

Dr Ofori-Tenkorang assured the public that the new management and the board of SSNIT were working effectively to safeguard the contributions of beneficiaries.

“We are taking prudent measures to ensure sustainability of the scheme.

We are focused on efficient customer service to improve our services to the public,” Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said.

He said SSNIT was focused on making it easier for people “to give us their money and also make it easier to collect their money”.

“We can only achieve this when we are transparent and I can assure the public that we have intensified our internal and external controls to protect contributors’ funds, as well as make the scheme sustainable,” Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said.

Initiatives

He said SSNIT was also liaising with the informal sector to address the peculiar needs of low-income earners.

Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said the future looked bright for SSNIT, in that the entity had, for the first time in many years, received dividends of GH¢1 million and GH¢500,000 from the Labadi Beach Hotel and the Trust Hospitals, respectively.

He assured the public that the SSNIT management had resolved and was working assiduously to ensure that the scheme was sustainable for generations to come.

New entrants

Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said 209,551 new members, representing an increase of 14 per cent over the previous year, had been enrolled onto the scheme,

He said whereas SSNIT had the names of about 66,000 establishments on its payroll, the Registrar-General’s Department had more than 250,000 registered establishments, meaning there was more room for improvement in the enrolment of new members onto the scheme.

To that end, he said, SSNIT had initiated a collaboration with the Registrar-General’s Department and the Ghana Revenue Authority to connect to their databases to get on board all active registered establishments.

Dr Ofori-Tenkorang also said SSNIT was collaborating with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to leverage its platform in order to reduce the cost of producing new membership cards.

He further announced that contributions, which decreased by 12.6 per cent from 2015 to 2016, had increased by 26 per cent in 2017.