The National Coordinator of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Footballers Registrations, Joseph Nkoo, has reminded club owners to enroll their registered players onto the SSNIT scheme, in order to secure their future.
“We’re urging club owners to endeavour to enroll players that have registered with the Ghana Football Association (GFA) this season, onto the SSNIT scheme.
“This is the most realistic way of giving footballers a future when they retire from the sport,” he told the Times Sports at the weekend.
According to Mr Nkoo, the project is a nationwide programme aimed at enrolling all locally-based footballers, administrators and the technical team onto the SSNIT Pension Scheme.
“We have booked an appointment with the GFA president Kurt Okraku’s club – Dreams FC and Obed Nana Kwame Nketiah’s Berekum Chelsea FC, to get especially all their new players on board,” he said.
Educating a group of players from different club levels at the SWAG Park in Accra, he asserted that most of the clubs only needed to update their contribution reports.
“This, they could only do by visiting any of the 51 SSNIT branches nationwide to remove all players who had left their teams, from the list and replace them withnewly-registered ones,” he said, urging the remaining 16 Ghana Premier League clubs to emulate the steps taken by Dreams FC and Berekum Chelsea FC.
Mr Nkoo emphasised that the Director General of SSNIT, Dr John Ofori Tenkorang, was not happy with the rate at which the sporting industry in Ghana was left behind when it came to club owners contributing to SSNIT on behalf of their players “who can be best described as their workers.”
In a response to a question, he stressed that clubs were given adequate education as regards the reason SSNIT was established and the benefits of SSNIT before the registration process rolled.
“It’s no secret that all players – especially those in the Premier League, receive salaries as part of their contract obligations and the clubs are therefore mandated to pay their SSNIT contributions.”
Mr Nkoo said it was wrong for people to always ascribe a footballer’s career as short-lived for which reason many were not motivated to pay their SSNIT contributions.
“What we should all know is that even if they stop playing within the shortest possible time and want to do any other business, they would use the same SSNIT numbers they’re enrolled on.”
BY JOHN VIGAH
