The Director General of the Social and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), John Ofori Tenkorang, has revealed that less than 1 percent of the over six million working population in the informal sector are covered by the Trust.

The figure, according to him is much lower than the 60% of the more than 3 million people employed in the formal sector who SSNIT covers.

Speaking with journalists outside Parliament after a hearing with the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the SSNIT Director General said the institution has introduced a platform to rope in more workers in the informal sector.

Additionally, Dr Tenkorang shared the progress made thus far on the platform which is dubbed Self-Employed Enrollment Drive (SEED).

“When we started last year, we only had about 14,000 people enrolled on the SSNIT scheme as self-employed but today, we have about 71,000 people enrolled on the scheme as self-employed persons,” Ofori-Tenkorang noted.

He continued, “The statistics I gave to the committee, if you look at the February payroll, which we have just paid, out of some 245,000 pensioners that we paid, only 630, constituting 0.3 percent, are people who have retired as self-employed persons. If you juxtapose that against the total worker population, you will see that we have a long way to go.”

NOQ