General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Pensioners, Edward Ameyibor says members are not happy with the eleven percent Social Security and National Insurance Trust, SSNIT, increment being offered them.
He told Radio Ghana that the increment is meager, but the Association cannot do anything to influence any change, except to appeal to the good will of SSNIT management.
Meanwhile, the Executive Director of Labour Policy International, a Pensions think tank, Seth Abloso says the increment in SSNIT benefits could have been better if the resources had been managed more efficiently.
Mr. Abloso said more than GH¢18 billion have been mismanaged and misappropriated. What SSNIT is managing now is what he described as insecure pension management.
Mr. Abloso said SSNIT is a trust and has no business donating any facility from the Trust Fund because it belongs to Ghanaian workers.
SSNIT increased the monthly pension by 11 per cent for this year.
This was done in consultation with the National Pensions Regulatory Commission (NPRA) and in accordance with Section 80 of the National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766).
In view of this, pensioners on the 2018 minimum monthly pension of GH¢276.00 will now receive a minimum monthly pension of 316 cedis while the minimum monthly pension for all fresh pensioners from January 2019 has been pegged at 300 cedis.
This is more than the national monthly minimum wage of 287 cedis. This was revealed at a news conference in Accra by SSNIT to present the 2019 pension indexation.
The 2019 pension indexation pegged the minimum monthly pension increase at 11 per cent, with 9 per cent as a fix rate and 2 per cent being redistributed as a flat amount of GH¢15.00 to pensioners earning lower pensions.
The Director- General of SSNIT, Dr. John Ofori Tenkorang, said the scheme would incur an extra cost of 212 million cedis which had already been factored into its operations for the year 2019.
