Few public policy issues cut as deeply across generations as pensions and social protection. They speak to dignity after work, fairness between generations, fiscal discipline, and the integrity of the social contract between the state and its citizens. Yet, as Ghana undertakes yet another round of constitutional review, one omission stands out sharply. The near-total silence on pensions, social security, and the welfare of the elderly. This silence is not merely theoretical. It comes at a time when credible international institutions are issuing increasingly stark warnings about the sustainability of Ghana’s pension system, particularly the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), which remains the backbone of formal old-age income security for millions of Ghanaians.
A recent World Bank study titled, “Social Protection Programme Spending and Household Welfare in Ghana” has drawn attention to a problem that pension analysts and labour groups have long suspected, but which has now been authoritatively confirmed. Persistent government indebtedness to SSNIT has reduced the Trust’s investment earnings and jeopardized its already fragile ability to meet future pension obligations. According to the report, over the past decade, the Government of Ghana failed to remit more than GH¢3 billion in pension contributions owed on behalf of its employees. These arrears, the World Bank notes, have constrained SSNIT’s investment capacity and weakened its long-term financial position.
This assessment echoes earlier warnings from the International Labour Organization (ILO), which has repeatedly flagged delayed remittances, weak enforcement, and governance vulnerabilities as structural risks to Ghana’s contributory pension arrangements. Together, these findings expose a pension system under strain, at precisely the moment when constitutional reform should have offered an opportunity for long-term correction.
Government Arrears and the Erosion of Trust
Pension contributions are not discretionary payments. They are deferred wages, earned by workers and held in trust for their retirement. When government fails to remit these funds on time, it is not merely engaging in administrative delay; it is effectively borrowing from workers’ future incomes, often without transparency, compensation, or consequence. The World Bank report makes a striking observation that extends beyond pensions. It notes that the government has a “pervasive and chronic problem” of accumulating arrears to service providers. SSNIT, it turns out, is only one among many creditors, but the implications here are far more serious. While unpaid contractors may suffer cash-flow problems, unpaid pension contributions threaten the retirement security of an entire generation.
SSNIT itself has acknowledged this risk repeatedly in its annual reports and actuarial reviews, where delayed remittances, particularly from public sector employers, are cited as a major constraint on fund performance. What the World Bank study does is to quantify the scale of the problem and elevate it from a technical concern to a macro-fiscal and social risk. In jurisdictions with stronger pension governance, such arrears would trigger automatic interest penalties, statutory sanctions, or legal action. In Ghana, enforcement remains uneven, especially when the debtor is the state itself.
Not a Partisan Accusation, but a Structural Failure
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not an attempt to assign blame to the current administration led by His Excellency, John Dramani Mahama. The accumulation of government arrears to SSNIT is a legacy problem, spanning several political cycles and reflecting a long-standing culture of weak fiscal discipline rather than the policy failure of any one government. However, the fact that this problem has persisted across administrations is precisely what makes it so dangerous. When harmful practices become normalized, they cease to provoke outrage and instead become embedded in public finance management.
The present government’s promise of a national “reset” therefore raises legitimate expectations. A reset, by definition, implies a break from entrenched habits. Pension arrears, because they involve workers’ deferred wages, are among the most compelling tests of that promise. What is required is not rhetoric, but action. Formal acknowledgment of the debt owed to SSNIT and a clear, transparent, and time-bound plan to retire it in phases, backed by safeguards to prevent recurrence.
A Familiar Pattern: Lessons from the NHIS
The World Bank report situates the SSNIT problem within a broader pattern of social protection financing in Ghana. It draws an instructive comparison with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which faces chronic reimbursement delays. According to the study, the NHIS is so slow in paying healthcare providers that many now refuse to accept NHIS patients or resort to illegal co-payments. The consequences are predictable. Reduced access, declining service quality, and growing public skepticism. The lesson is clear. When the state consistently fails to honour its financial commitments, even well-designed social programmes lose legitimacy. Contributors disengage, providers withdraw, and informal coping mechanisms replace formal systems. For pensions, where trust must be sustained over decades, the damage is even harder to repair.
Limited Coverage and the Informal Sector Challenge
The World Bank study also underscores another long-standing weakness of Ghana’s pension system — limited coverage. Despite recent initiatives to attract informal sector workers who make up the majority of the labour force, participation in SSNIT remains modest. This challenge is not unique to Ghana. Across the developing world, contributory pension schemes struggle to enroll informal workers with irregular incomes and limited confidence in public institutions. What is striking, however, is the report’s blunt conclusion that the government “probably cannot and will not fund a universal pension”.
Any meaningful expansion of coverage, the report argues, would therefore require actuarially fair premium payments from new members, precisely the condition that discourages many informal workers from joining. This creates a policy dilemma. Without subsidies or matching contributions, informal workers stay out. Without broader participation, risk pooling remains weak. And without constitutional or legal guarantees of state support, the system stagnates.
The Constitutional Blind Spot
It is against this backdrop that the omissions of the Constitutional Review Committee (CRC) become so troubling. Ghana’s 1992 Constitution contains only indirect and largely non-justiciable references to social welfare. There is no explicit constitutional protection for pension funds, no enforceable obligation on the state to safeguard workers’ contributions, and no recognition of old-age income security as a right. This stands in contrast to constitutional developments elsewhere. In South Africa, Kenya, and parts of Latin America, social security is explicitly recognized as a justiciable right, compelling governments to prioritize sustainability, transparency, and coverage. In Ghana, constitutional silence has allowed pension governance to be treated as a technical matter, shielded from broader accountability. The result is a system vulnerable to fiscal encroachment, political expediency, and policy drift.
Oversight without Teeth?
The National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) was established to provide oversight across Ghana’s three-tier pension system, and it has made progress in licensing, compliance monitoring, and public education. Yet its authority over government behaviour remains limited. Private employers who fail to remit contributions face penalties. When the state defaults, enforcement becomes politically complex. This asymmetry undermines confidence in the regulatory framework and weakens the principle that the law applies equally to all contributors.
The ILO and the Question of Pension Governance
The ILO has long emphasized that pension sustainability is not merely a technical or actuarial issue, but fundamentally a question of governance and political commitment. In multiple assessments of pension systems in developing economies, the organization has stressed that contributory schemes can only function effectively when remittances are timely, rules are enforced uniformly, and pension assets are insulated from fiscal pressures. In Ghana’s case, the recurring problem is not the absence of laws or institutions, but the weakness of enforcement when those laws constrain the state itself. This creates a moral hazard. If government can delay or withhold pension contributions without consequence, private employers may question why they should comply strictly. Over time, such dynamics corrode the integrity of the entire system.
The ILO has also warned that persistent arrears and governance weaknesses ultimately shift risk onto contributors and retirees. When pension funds underperform due to factors beyond market conditions, such as withheld contributions or politically influenced investment decisions, the burden is borne by those least able to absorb it. Who are they? They are the workers approaching retirement and elderly pensioners living on fixed incomes.
Demographics and the Cost of Delay
Ghana remains a relatively young country, but demographic trends are changing. Life expectancy has increased steadily over the past decades, while fertility rates have declined. As a result, the proportion of elderly citizens is projected to rise, even if slowly by global standards. This demographic transition makes pension reform more urgent, not less. A system that struggles under current conditions will face even greater strain as the dependency ratio shifts. Without deliberate action, old-age poverty risks becoming a major social challenge, one that will place increasing pressure on families, local communities, and public finances.
It is worth recalling that pensions are among the few social policies where policy failures are felt long after the decisions that caused them. Today’s arrears become tomorrow’s benefit shortfalls. Today’s constitutional silence becomes tomorrow’s litigation, protests, or quiet hardship endured by retirees with few alternatives.
Why SSNIT Remains Central
This brings us back to the recurring question from readers of my close to thirty articles: Why the sustained focus on SSNIT pensions? The answer lies in SSNIT’s centrality. SSNIT is not just another public institution; it is the anchor of Ghana’s formal old-age security system. For millions of workers, it represents the only reliable source of income after active employment. When SSNIT’s finances or governance are compromised, the effects ripple outward, to households, to labour markets, and ultimately to social stability. Focusing on SSNIT is therefore not an obsession, nor a narrow technocratic concern. It is a lens through which broader issues of fiscal discipline, governance, and intergenerational fairness can be examined. A state that cannot reliably protect workers’ pension contributions sends a troubling signal about its commitment to long-term responsibility.
Legacy Debt, Present Responsibility
It bears repeating that the debt owed to SSNIT is a legacy debt. It did not arise overnight, nor can it be attributed to a single administration. Successive governments have contributed to its accumulation, often under fiscal stress and competing priorities. But legacy problems do not absolve present responsibility. On the contrary, they heighten it. The longer such debts persist, the more normalized they become, and the harder they are to resolve.
The current administration’s “reset agenda” therefore matters greatly in this context. A reset worthy of the name requires confronting uncomfortable inheritances, not accommodating them. Settling SSNIT arrears need not happen overnight, but it should happen deliberately, through transparent acknowledgment, phased repayment schedules, and legal safeguards that prevent future governments from repeating the same practice.
The Missed Constitutional Moment
This is why the work of the Constitutional Review Committee feels like a missed moment. Constitutional reform is not about solving every policy problem, but about setting boundaries and principles that endure beyond electoral cycles. At a minimum, the review process could have been firm on certain fundamentals. That workers’ pension contributions are inviolable; that SSNIT funds are not a fallback financing option for the state; and that Heritage and future-generation funds are similarly protected from short-term fiscal pressures. Entrenching such principles constitutionally would not eliminate economic shocks or fiscal stress. But it would force governments to confront trade-offs honestly, rather than quietly shifting the burden onto pension funds and, by extension, retirees.
My Thoughts: Silence Has Consequences
The warnings from the World Bank and the ILO should not be read as distant technocratic commentary. They are early signals of structural stress in one of Ghana’s most important social institutions. Ignoring them risks entrenching a dangerous precedent, one in which workers’ deferred wages are treated as expendable and old-age security as negotiable. If Ghana is serious about dignity in retirement, trust in public institutions, and fairness between generations, then pensions — and SSNIT in particular — must move from the margins to the center of constitutional and economic debate. Silence, in this context, is not neutrality. It is exposure to risk. Gargantuan risk!
FUSEINI ABDULAI BRAIMAH
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