The Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Health Sector Occupational Pension Scheme (HSOPS) has assured its contributors that they are reasonably ready to take over payments of lump sum come January 2020. Dr Derek Amoateng, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Health Sector Occupational Pension Scheme, gave the assurance at the commissioning of the Scheme’s temporary secretariat located on the premises of the Greater Accra Regional Office of the Ghana Registered Nurses and Midwives Association’s (GRNMA) at Korle-Bu, near Zoti Junction, Accra.

He said these lump sum payments, would consist of past credit of contributors held by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) prior to January 01, 2010 contributions in Temporary Pension Fund Accounts (TPFA), which has been ring-fenced and would soon be allocated to members, and direct contributions received from the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department and the facilities since 2016.

Dr Amoateng said the HSOPS Board, was inaugurated together with other boards of government barely two years ago with a clear mandate to ensure the smooth implementation of the tier two component of the new three-tier pension scheme in Ghana, and tasked with building on the foundation already laid by preceding BoTs, as well as the various unions in the health sector, government, NPRA and other stakeholders.

The HSOPS Board has since then worked hard by reviewing and strengthening the existing systems in the scheme and setting new ones with the overall focus on securing and growing retirement income for health workers, he said. He said the “TPFA as transferred to us in December 2017 continues to make impressive gains,” and that the Board was actively working with the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), government and other stakeholders, to finalise the data on TPFA in order to allocate the funds and make them accessible to members beginning from January 01, 2020.

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