Social security number remains same for life

This number enables the authority to track an employee’s contribution record no matter how many times the individual changes jobs.
When taking up new employment and filling in a new NSSA employee registration form, the employee should enter the same social security number as originally allocated.
If the employee does not know the social security number, however, all is not lost, as the national identity number, which is also entered on the registration form, will enable NSSA to identify him or her in its records, which should show the employee’s social security number.
Those who wish to know their social security number can obtain it from their nearest NSSA office or sub-office. They will need to take their national identity card with them.
The individual’s employment history from October 1994, the date on which the national pension scheme began, should also be entered on the form. This also helps to track where contributions have come from or should have come from, since it is the responsibility of the employer to deduct the employee’s national pension scheme contribution and remit it together with the employer’s own equal contribution to NSSA each month.
Other information that should be included on the form are details of one’s spouse or spouses, marriage date and children and other dependants.
In the event of the contributor dying, this information will assist NSSA when the spouse, spouses or other dependants put in a claim for a survivor’s benefit.
The fuller and clearer the information provided, the easier it will be for NSSA to process benefit claims.
The completed employee registration form is supposed to be returned to NSSA within seven days through the employer.
Employers who fail to register themselves and their employees or to remit their own and their employees’ contributions to NSSA are contravening the law and face the risk of prosecution. The same applies to employees who give false information on their registration form.
While most employers fulfil their legal obligation to remit contributions to NSSA there are some who fail to do so. These include even some large and well known organisations that, having failed to make the monthly payments required of them, find themselves facing the attachment of property due to the sizeable arrears they have accumulated over a considerable period of time.
Contributions to the national pension scheme are at present modest. However, where large employers default on payment the combined amount over a period of years can be considerable, even without the penalties and surcharges incurred through failure to remit the contributions to NSSA.
A number of employees have written to this column stating that they either suspect or know that their employer is not remitting contributions to NSSA, even though contributions are being deducted from their salaries.
Where details of the employer have been provided these have been forwarded to NSSA’s compliance department for follow-up.
Employees who suspect their contributions are not being remitted to NSSA can contact NSSA to confirm whether or not this is the case.
Employers sometimes try to excuse their default by claiming they are not making enough money to enable them to contribute yet they would have deducted money from an employee’s salary that is money that belonged to the employee and was part of his or her salary before it was deducted.
Deducting contributions from salaries and retaining them could be considered theft, since the money is the employee’s money and deducted for a specific purpose, namely for contributions to the employee’s future social security pension.
There are some expenses, such as taxes and social security payments that have to be made. If they are not, the employer finds itself on the wrong side of the law and subject to the possible additional expenses of financial penalties, as well as possible prosecution.
While NSSA has a duty to ensure employers comply with the legal requirement to register, deduct employee social security contributions from employees’ salaries and remit these together with their own contributions to it, it does understand the economic pressures many companies are subject to. Where arrears have been accumulated, it is willing to discuss a possible payment plan to clear these arrears.
Employees who suspect their employer has not been remitting their contributions to NSSA would be wise to keep their payslips as proof that NSSA pension scheme deductions were made from their earnings.
NSSA pension scheme contributions and workers’ compensation insurance fund premiums are normally remitted to NSSA together on Form P4A.
Failure to remit workers’ compensation insurance fund payments to NSSA means that workers are not covered by the workers’ compensation insurance in the event of injury or death at work. Accidents can occur at any time.
The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fund premium is paid by the employer alone. It is not contributed to by the employee.
Keeping track of national pension scheme payments through the single social security number allocated to each employee is of vital importance because when it comes to retirement the size of the retired worker’s pension will be determined in part by the number of monthly contributions that have been made over his or her working life.
l Talking Social Security is published weekly by the National Social Security Authority as a public service. Readers can e-mail issues they would like dealt with in this column to [email protected] or text them to 0735 041 278. Those with individual queries should contact their local NSSA office or telephone NSSA on (04) 706517-8 or 706523/5.