The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) will be adopting the use of the Ghana Card for its operations starting today (28 June), Dr John Ofori-Tenkorang, the director general of the Trust has said.
This means the National Identification Card will from Monday (28 June) become the unique SSNIT number.
Speaking to stakeholders ahead of the merger, Dr Ofori-Tenkorang said, “This migration answers the question; why carry two cards if one can do the job? For us at SSNIT, this transition tides nicely with our quest to improve the ease of doing business with the Trust. Your convenience means everything to us and the switch to the use of the Ghana Card will mean that you only have to carry one card for practically all your transactions with us.”
He added, “It will also mean that new joiners to the scheme will have to provide their Ghana Card number to enrol into the SSNIT scheme. Employers and self-employed can only pay contributions using their NIA numbers.
“Members will be required to provide their Ghana Card numbers to access their statements of account and pensioners aged 72 years will be required to renew their pensioner certificates with the Ghana Card,” he added.
He said SSNIT has carefully thought through this task of migrating from the current member identification platform to that of the NIA and have come up with a plan on how to proceed.
The process of merging the two identification numbers is expected to continue until 31 December this year.
This means that from 1 January next year, SSNIT contributors will no longer use their scheme numbers but will transact all business with SSNIT with their Ghana Card.
The merger complies with Regulation 7 (1) of the National Identity Register Regulations, 2012, LI 2111, and a directive from the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA).
The regulation, among other things, requires the use of the Ghana Card as a means of identification for “transactions pertaining to individuals in respect of pensions”.
A similar merger is being done by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to enable taxpayers to use their Ghana Card numbers as their Tax Identification Numbers (TINs).
The idea of merging is to support the government’s digitalisation agenda.
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