Since death and its devastating effects on survivors is not shrouded in any mystery, it is not unknown to all and sundry; but sometimes the real story about the incontrovertible truths about the devastating effects of death is better left to be told by widows, widowers, orphans, successors and other close relatives of the deceased. My little experience as an orphan since my father died in active service three years ago leaves me no other option than to appreciate the efforts made by those who engineered the establishment of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) in 1965 for the apparent show of sympathy and empathy towards pensioners and survivors.
It breaks my heart to say, however, that like most state-owned enterprises, SSNIT is not fully committed to discharging its core responsibility which, in my opinion, is the provision of contingent welfare packages for pensioners and survivors enshrined in the Social Security Law – 1991 (P.N.D.C.L. 247), National Pensions Act, 2008 (Act 766) and the National Pensions (Amendment) Act, 2014 (Act 883). Amongst all state-owned enterprises; SSNIT, in my opinion, has been entrusted with the most unique responsibility which has humane touches of care, sympathy, empathy and support to alleviate the sufferings of pensioners and survivors in their most probable vulnerable moments.
There is therefore no doubt to the fact SSNIT reneging on any of its responsibilities will have chaotic effects which will further add insults to injury as far as the sufferings of pensioners and survivors are concerned. When my father died, his successor, my mother the widow and my elder brother went to the SSNIT office at Asafo, a suburb of Kumasi, in February, 2013 to report his death. The staff of SSNIT who attended to them told them to bring the following documents: a letter proving his death from his place of work, his Letters of Administration and death certificate which they submitted to the same office with a copy of his funeral invitation and tribute book in March, 2013.
We had to wait from the time the documents were submitted to the 13th day of August, 2015 for SSNIT start the payment of benefits into the various accounts of beneficiaries. Throughout that period, we encountered many problems when we followed up on our claim. I remember the kind of mockery and insults my mother and I were subjected to when we went to the Bekwai Branch to follow up on our claim. I went to the office of the Area Manager to seek his assistance for my family to receive our survivors' benefits which was apparently being delayed for far too long in the month of November, 2014. The Area Manager contacted a woman I have known through my various visits to the Asafo Branch Office; and to my surprise this same woman said our claimant file has been forwarded to Bekwai which is close to our hometown where most of us, the beneficiaries, could easily be identified for identification of survivors (I was surprised to hear this because this same woman had always given me the impression anytime I went to the Asafo Branch Office that our claimant file was in Accra and that it was taking time for us to receive payment of benefits because there are so many claims being processed in Accra).
My mother and I went to the Bekwai Office only for the woman we talked to at the Bekwai Branch to call the same woman at the Asafo Branch to find out from her if she indeed said she had sent our claimant file to them in Bekwai; and that was when it became apparent to me from the utterances of the woman before whom I was sitting that they were mocking my mother and I with derogatory comments on our intelligence; I was glad however that my mother didn't have to go through the insults and mockery with me because she was sitting at a distance from us. The truth of the matter is that our claimant file was not in Bekwai.
In fact, it took the intervention of the Area Manager, Mr. Allandu Azu, the Monitoring Officer, Mr. Sechofia to get our claimant file moved from the Asafo Branch to the head office in Accra on 20th May, 2015; and intervention of the SSNIT Contact Centre in Accra before we payment of benefits to us from 13th August, 2015 to the latter parts of September, 2015.
The problem I am about to talk about would have gone unnoticed if my family had received payment of benefits earlier. Throughout the about twenty-eight waiting period, I made some research into the our laws on pensions and survivors' benefits with the aim of finding out if my family could take any legal action against SSNIT for delaying the payment of benefits for far too long. My research came to an end when I could not find any clause in our laws that required SSNIT to make payment to survivors within a specific period of time before the payment of benefits was started. However, when we started receiving payments of benefits, most of my family members could not actually get the basis on which payment was made to us. I for one had already done the computation of benefits following the guidelines specified in a document I obtained on SSNIT's official website entitled 'Computation-Survivors- Benefits'.
I noticed that the total amount of benefits we received fell short of the amount of benefits we expected. So, with the consent of members of my family, I started making enquiries about what might have accounted for the difference, which was at variance, from the SSNIT Contact Centre. It got to a point when the SSNIT Contact Centre directed me to channel all my request and enquiries to the Complaints and Adjudication Unit because, according to them, the request were being made after the payment of benefits. The request had to with my late father's most current SSNIT Contribution Statement.
According to the SSNIT Contact Centre, our benefits were computed using my late father's monthly contributions from May, 2013 to June, 2010 with the explanation that my late father's employer's last contribution was made on May, 2013; and though my father died on 30th October, 2012, SSNIT only concerned itself with contributions made whether or not the employee received the amount of salary on which the contribution was made or not. However, the figure quoted on as his best three years' salaries fell short of what we had on his Statement which had his contributions up to December, 2012. So I, with the consent of family and on our joint behalf, requested for my late father's Statement with his contributions up to May, 2013.
My family was directed by the Complaints and Adjudication Unit to go to the nearest SSNIT branch office and route the following documents through them to the Complaints and Adjudication Unit in Accra: a letter clearly specifying our request with the signature of at least one of the applicants whose name appears on my late father's Letters of Administration, a copy of my late father's Letters of Administration and a photocopy of the ID card of the signatory to the letter afore-mentioned. I went to the Asafo Branch Office with my mother with all the required documents on 8th October, 2015.
We had to press on continuously for us to get the SSNIT Contribution Statement on the 7th day of December, 2015. Before that I made a follow-up phone call to the Complaints and Adjudication Unit in Accra about a week after we routed the required documents through the Asafo Branch to them; and I was glad that the same woman who directed us to route the documents through the nearest SSNIT branch (whose name I will not mention now for some reasons) was the one to receive my call that day; and she told me that she could not tell whether or not they have received the said documents with a promise that she will have to follow it up and that I should call again in two weeks' time to know if they have received the said documents or not. I waited patiently for the two weeks to elapse without receiving the SSNIT Statement, I placed calls to the Complaints and Adjudication Unit which did not go through. I had to call the SSNIT Contact Centre with the complaints that I could not reach the Complaints and Adjudication Unit on phone and they have not been responding to the mails I sent them; and I was relieved to hear that the SSNIT Contact Centre was going to follow up on my claims. There were some interactions between the SSNIT Contact Centre and me through phone calls and emails. In one of those interactions, I was informed that my late father took a student loan and that some part of his benefits were used to defray that loan; and that the student may have accounted for the difference between benefits we were supposed to receive and benefits received. I was however surprised to know that loan being talked about was GH¢85.31 only.
When I finally received the Contribution Statement on the said date, I immediately calculated the amount benefits my family was supposed to receive following the guidelines specified in the document I obtained from SSNIT's official website and I had total sum of GH¢50,953.15 out of which I subtracted the student loan amount of GH¢85.31 to get the final amount of GH¢50,867.84 which is the total amount of benefits my family is supposed to receive from SSNIT which some members of family (including my humble self) thought was not that substantial enough considering the fact that my late father made SSNIT Contributions for over thirty-one years. That notwithstanding, the total payment SSNIT made to us is GH¢33,525.85 and it therefore became apparent that SSNIT was still owing my family the total of GH¢17,341.99 which is over one-third of the benefits we were supposed to receive as survivors' benefits. I wrote, on the joint behalf of my family, a letter to SSNIT with details of our discovery and requested they give reply stating clearly whether or not they accept they owe us the said amount on the 9th day December, 2015.
In a letter dated 11th December, 2015 and signed on behalf of the Manager of the Complaints and Adjudication Unit (which we received as an email on 16th December, 2015), SSNIT accept they owe us an amount which is a little over GH¢7,000.00 in outstanding benefits with reasons which go contrary to the information we received from the SSNIT Contact Centre and some relevant portions of our laws on pensions and survivors' benefits. Therefore, we sent another letter stating clearly that we computed the benefits using information we had from the SSNIT Contact Centre and the document on SSNIT's official website which are in accordance with our laws on pensions and survivors' benefits and that we still want SSNIT to clearly state if they accept they owe my family the said amount; and up to date, the Complaints and Adjudication Unit of SSNIT has not been able to give us any reply. The SSNIT Contact Centre has been responding to our mails with their regular message that they have forwarded our documents and mails to the Complaints and Adjudication Unit as requested and that we should patiently wait to hear from them.
We have waited for over three weeks to hear from the Complaints and Adjudication Unit which is far too long; and this obviously means our patience being stretched beyond normal elasticity. Besides, if it took them 7 days for them reply to the letter we sent them on 9th December, 2015; why is it taking them this long to simply let us know whether or not they stand by their former decision of owing us a little over GH¢7,000.00 after receiving our response to their reply (dated 11th December, 2015) of our letter (dated 9th December, 2015)?
We believe that the Complaints and Adjudication Unit of SSNIT has deliberately refused to reply to all of mails from the 21st day of December, 2015 till now. I therefore make bold to ask: do our complaints matter to SSNIT? Does SSNIT agree with my family that, above all things, they have the responsibility to protect the interest of fragile survivors like us? Is the problem I have just discussed peculiar only to our survivors' benefits?
I have been going through our various law on pensions and survivors' benefits; and I must confess that I am yet to come across any section on ways my family can get SSNIT to pay the outstanding benefits they owe us other than dialogue which obviously has proven abortive in our case. My family will therefore welcome any suggestions, directives and any legal assistance from the public which will help us claim the outstanding benefits from SSNIT on 0275242960 and 0202347363 or calyeb89@gmail.com.
Source : articlesbase.com
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