The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) says it saved GH¢20 million after embarking on a payroll clean-up exercise.
SSNIT introduced the payroll clean-up exercise early this year to ensure that monies are paid to the rightful persons.
It said it saved the amount in September this year after deleting 6,452 ghost names from the pensioners’ payroll.
This came to light on Thursday in Accra when the Director General of SSNIT, Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang, interacted with the media.
According to the Director-General, the Trust was optimistic of increasing savings from the payroll clean-up to about GH¢26 million.
He said “every month we are saving over GH¢2 million which means that the pension expenditure is going to slow down and help to make the fund sustainable.”
The Director-General revealed that the Trust had put in place other cost-cutting measures, which have yielded significant savings.
Such savings were made on foreign travels, competitive procurement and internal audit on ICT systems.
Dr Ofori-Tenkorang, however, gave assurance that such cost-cutting measures would not affect pension payout to beneficiaries, and insisted that “despite these cost-cutting measures, we have not reneged on our responsibility of paying benefits.”
He added that “a total of GH¢2.2 billion was paid to 189,549 pensioners and other beneficiaries in 2017 as compared to a payment of GH¢1.7 billion to 174,164 pensioners and other beneficiaries in 2016.”
He said there was an increase of 29.41% in the previous year’s benefit payouts and said “in January 2018, all pension payments were increased by 10%.”
He added that the minimum pension, which is above the statutory monthly minimum wage, had been adhered to.
By Paul Nyojah Dalafu
