What is a Social Security number?

 

The social security number that is allocated to an employee when he or she first registers with NSSA remains the 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, all is not lost. 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 that 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 dates, 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 benefits 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 the 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 payment 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 of 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 raised concern over suspecting or knowing 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 that their contributions are not being remitted to NSSA can contact the authority 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, which money 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 as theft, since the money is the employee’s money and deducted for a specific purpose. There are more expenses such as tax 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 will be subject to the possible additional expenses of financial penalty, as well as possible prosecution.

While NSSA has a duty to ensure employers comply with the legal requirement to register, deduct employees social security contributions and remit these together with their own contribution to it, it does not understand the economic pressure many companies are subject to.

Where arrears have been accumulated, the authority 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 pay slips as proof that the pension scheme deductions were made from their earnings.

NSSA pension scheme contributions and workers’ compensation insurance fund premiums are normally remitted to the authority together on Form P4A.
Failure to remit workers’ compensation insurance fund payments to NSSA means that workers are not covered by the insurance in the event of injury or death at work. The

Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fund premium is paid by the employer alone. It is not contributed by the employee.
Keeping track of national pension scheme payments through the single social security number allocated to each employee is of vital importance 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.
Last month, NSSA’s compliance inspectorate started its yearly inspection of visiting business premises to verify employers’ compliance with the national Pension and Other Benefits Scheme.

The inspection also includes the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Fund regulations. Since the dollarisation of the economy in 2009, many local companies have struggled to comply with statutory obligations to the extend that NSSA noted unless reminded or re-visited, most of them tend to overlook remittance of contributions. Sometimes companies prioritise other obligations and relegate those to do with NSSA to the bottom of their scheduled payments.

Local authorities have also experienced liquidity challenges that local companies have been facing.
NSSA inspectors are empowered by the law to apply to the client’s bank for compulsory transfer of the outstanding amounts together with penalties and surcharges.

The law protects workers who are able to prove that contributions were deducted.
However, there have also been cases of the deceitful lodging of claims by people and this has invited the interest of the police.