SSNIT decides to stop accepting contributions from members over 60

The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), which recently decided to stop accepting contributions from members who have reached the retirement age of 60, is being urged to reverse this decision by the Africa Center for Retirement Research (ACRR).

In an interview with Citi News, the Executive Director for ACRR, Mashud Abdallah, claimed that SSNIT misunderstood the law and that the implementation of the policy would have disastrous effects on the affected members of the scheme. The directive to disallow contributions is based on section 70(1) of the Pensions Act.

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The regulation did not specify the actuarial foundation of the policy or its social and financial consequences on the impacted employees, according to a statement issued by ACRR, the think tank.

The National Pension Act of 2008 (Act 766) was only briefly mentioned in the directive, according to ACRR. “The directive did not detail the actuarial basis of the policy nor its social and financial impact on the affected workers or the scheme,” the organization said in a statement.

A member of the social security system who (a) retires when reaching the mandatory retirement age of sixty years, (b) retires voluntarily when reaching the age of fifty-five years, and (c) has contributed to the social security fund for a period of not less than fifteen years in the aggregate, or one hundred and eighty months in the aggregate, is entitled to a superannuation pension, according to the Pensions Act of 1970, Section 1 (a).