The recent extension of the frontiers of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) when it launched the Self-Employed Enrolment Drive (SEED) initiative is a wonderful stride which needs the support of all Ghanaians to succeed.
It is an intervention which should over the years reverse a bad situation which has been allowed to fester for far too long.
A section of the Ghanaian population have for a long time erroneously considered social insurance service which SSNIT provides as belonging to only the formal sector.
The informal sector has been left out from the social security basket because of a well-fashioned novelty such as we are having now to encompass the self-employed.
Better late than never as the dictum goes, we can only laud management of the Trust led by the Director General (DG) for sowing the SEED at this time.
The future of our hardworking workers outside the remit of the formal sector must be protected.
No longer should workers in the informal sector come home after so many years of service with nothing at the end of the month to support them.
Only 600,000 self-employed persons in the country having social security cover is a worrying detail. It casts an image of reckless management of the subject over decades, leaving us with a situation where 90 percent of those in the informal sector are not covered by social security. To think that all is well with this picture is as unacceptable as it is inappropriate.
We won’t be wrong if we conclude that generations of managers of the affairs of this country have not found the subject worthy of treating.
It is for this reason that we find the SSNIT SEED initiative something which should be propped through advanced marketing interventions.
In a digitised ambience, we have learnt about how the Trust has already fashioned online payment system. This would go a long way in facilitating the project.
We also ask that education on the subject be intensified so that people can understand and appreciate it. Misconception of such projects can often lead to passiveness.
We have no doubt anyway that the DG and this management are up to the task of carrying the assignment through the nooks and crannies of the country.
The roadside mechanics, chop bar owners, hairdressers and many others who constitute the bulk of the informal sector need SEED. Before they take the game-changing leap of accepting it however, they must understand it well and what better way to do so than meeting them at their workshops.
The dearth of social security cover for most actors in the informal sector can only be addressed through informal interventions.
The over-focus on the formal sector to the detriment of the informal does not inure to the interest of our self-employed.
We encourage informed discussions on the subject so that there would be no prejudices and other challenges that can inhibit progress.
That less than two percent of the active membership of the Trust are self-employed is another damning detail. Something is wrong and that must be addressed now.
A good seed has been sowed, let us water it constantly.