An initiative that will enable about 500,000 informal sector pension workers to enjoy pensions when they retire has been launched.
The pension scheme, known as the Trades Union Congress (TUC)/Union of Informal Workers Association (UNIWA) Informal Economy Workers’ Pension Scheme aims at opening up pension opportunities under the third tier scheme of the country’s pension policy for informal workers, who constitute about 85 per cent of the country’s workforce.
The scheme was launched in Accra last Wednesday.
With as little as GH¢1, informal sector workers can contribute to the scheme.
The scheme is the result of the collaboration between the TUC and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), a social democratic organisation in Germany.
The two institutions worked together to bring together some informal sector workers under UNIWAS and the pension scheme was subsequently born, with the People’s Pension Trust (PPT) Ghana Ltd as corporate managers of the scheme.
The Informal Economy Workers Pension Scheme has been customised to provide informal workers the opportunity to access 50 per cent of their contributions lodged in emergencies, while the other half is managed for their benefit at retirement.
MELR informal office
In a keynote address at the launch of the scheme, the Secretary General of the TUC, Dr Yaw Baah, charged the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations (MELR) to set up an office for the informal sector at the ministry.
He said such an office was long overdue because the informal sector workers were more than formal sector workers.
He assured the workers that the PPT was a trustworthy organisation, working in collaboration with other trustworthy institutions such as Data Bank, who are the fund managers, and Standard Chartered Bank, where their contributions would be lodged, to secure their future.
“You have not thrown your money away contributing to the scheme,” Dr Baah told the workers.
In his statement, the Resident Director of FES, Mr Fritz Kopsieker, encouraged the workers to support their mother organisation, UNIWA.
He said UNIWA had begun small with no salaries being paid to people to work or rent being paid for office space.
He said the voluntary effort of some members had resulted in achievements, and urged the traders to engage their organisation for better progress to be experienced by all.
Goodwill messages
In a goodwill message, the Chief Executive of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Mr Hayford Akrufi, urged the Board of Trustees of the TUC/UNIWA Informal Economy Pension Scheme to ensure compliance at all times with the guidelines and administrative directives issued by the authority to clarify the Pensions Law.
Mr Akrufi’s statement, which was read on his behalf by Mr Amartey Vondee, also of the NPRA, pledged to continually engage with partners in the pensions sector.
He also urged other informal sector groups and individuals to take advantage of the 3-tier pension scheme to contribute towards their old age.
The CEO of PPT, Mr Samuel Waterberg, said they were working with UNIWAS to rope onto the scheme informal sector workers and urged them to join UNIWAS.
The Chairman of the Local Organising Committee for the Formalisation of the Informal Economy, Mr Eben Anuwa-Amarh, quoting from the Ghana Living Standards Survey Round Six, said about 88 per cent of working persons were in the informal sector.
That meant that about 17.8 million workers could be reached through the informal economy pension scheme.
“These numbers are extraordinary and they call for an extraordinary response,” he said.
Other solidarity messages were delivered by Dr Joyce Aryee, who is a Board Member of PPT, and a representative of the Ministry of Gender and Social Protection.
The General Secretary of UNIWA, Ms Deborah Freeman, said 81,000 members of UNIWA had already registered onto the Scheme and had already started contributing towards it.