Director-General for Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Dr. John Ofori-Tenkorang has disclosed the Trust made an amount of GHC3. 4 billion as pension payments as of October this year.

Hesaid the payments included pension, survivor’s benefits and lump sums which are one-time payments made to SSNIT contributors who are not yet pensioners but are rendered vulnerable.

The SSNIT Director General revealed this at the Opening Ceremony of the Operation and Benefits Conference in Koforidua, Eastern Region.

Dr. Tenkorang acknowledged although the country finds itself in a tough economic environment, SSNIT continues to pay significant amounts of money to its members which in turn gets pumped into the country’s economy to help pensioners survive.

He added the Trust has been able to increase its self-employed membership from 14,000 during the turn of the year to 18,000 which is a 30% increment.

Dr. Tenkorang believes the upward adjustment was as result of the consistent stakeholder sensitization exercise by the Trust nationwide.

He pointed over 8 million Ghanaians are working who are either not contributing to SSNIT pension scheme or not on the scheme at all.

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According to him SSNIT is working tirelessly to migrate all of those people onboard to secure their retirement.

“We rolled out our electronic platform about two months ago and it is gradually bringing success. We’ve been able to increase our self-employed members which were achieved before rolling out our electronic system.

With our electronic platform in place and working we are looking to bring in about a million self-employed workers in a year or two,” he indicated.