Director General for Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Dr. Ofori Tenkorang has revealed that more than 19,100 ‘ghost’ pensioners have been removed from the scheme after it embarked on measures to ensure prompt payment of pensions.

According to the current pension scheme, when you are 75 years old and you pass away, SSNIT doesn’t have any further obligation towards you or your survivors. Before that age, if there is an untimely death, there is some residual amount that would be paid to your survivors.

He made this revelation during the SSNIT 2024 indexation rate at their headquarters in Accra today.

We send the pension amount every month straight to the bank accounts so if you are over 75 years old and you pass away, if we do not know that you have passed away, we will keep sending it every month.

He therefore said, SSNIT introduced a system that required pensioners over 75 years to show up at any of their offices nationwide to authenticate themselves biometrically every year.

He however said, this can be done in any of our branches nationwide. If for some reason you cannot come and you call us, we can even come to you and this has helped eliminate the ghost names.

He further added this exercise alone has saved us about GH¢480 million since we started six years ago. This is money that we would have been paying to illegitimate people.