The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) says employers who submit contributions reports for employees without Ghana card numbers from next year risk attracting sanctions.
According to SSNIT such reports submitted at its offices from the 2nd of January 2022 will be rejected and employers could suffer penalties on such contributions if they are subsequently not paid on time.
As part of the government’s plan to migrate all identification numbers onto the National Identification card, also known as Ghana card, the Social Security and National Insurance Trust on June 28, 2021, began processes to merge all SSNIT numbers to the Ghana card.
The merger is also in compliance with Regulation 7 (1) of the National Identity Register Regulations, 2012, L.I. 2111 and a directive from the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA).
The intended merger is expected to improve the ease of doing business with the Trust by enabling a convenient means to allow members to use one card, that is the Ghana Card, for all transactions.
So far over one million SSNIT contributors have had their unique scheme numbers merged with the Ghana Card since the start of the exercise.
Director-General of SSNIT, Dr. Ofori Tenkorang, said, although the numbers are encouraging, he urged persons who are yet to pull through to do so soon before the grace period elapses.
He was speaking at an employers’ breakfast meeting organised by his outfit.
“We communicated and said that by January 2022, you cannot submit contribution reports without NIA numbers. And if you do submit the reports without NIA numbers, that report will be rejected. And the payments if not made on time, you know what it means, it attracts penalties and so on and so forth.”
He added that “we have given a transition period from July to December to get this done. I am imploring you to make sure, each time you are submitting your contributing report, please check to make sure that every employee on the contribution report has their Ghana Card number also on that report. I beg you, let’s get that done way before the end of this year so that come January we are not going to have any of these problems”.
