By Edward Byamukama
National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has embarked on a plan to boost social security savings in the Albertine Region through financial literacy and retirement programmers targeting workers and employers.
This follows records of low social security contributions collected by the Fund in the Albertine and Northern region in the last financial year 2022/23 compared to other regions.
Addressing employers and workers at Hoima Buffalo Hotel, Patrick Ayota the managing director NSSF noted that the Fund had collected shs74.5bn in social security contributions from the Albertine and northern region, which is about 4% of the total contributions the Fund collected last financial year.
“Whereas this performance is not bad, it shows that we still need to encourage more workers in this region to join the Fund and save for their retirement, especially with the potential job opportunities presented by the oil discovery.”
He added, “The Fund had only 125,182 members from this region out of 1.6million membership by the end of last Financial year 2022/23.”
Information from the Fund showed that member contributions had generally increased by 15% from shs1.49 trillion in Financial Year 2021/22 to shs1.72 trillion in Financial Year 2022/23.
Ayota said that the Fund had started initiatives to help increase the willingness and capacity for Ugandans to save in line with its new strategic approach dubbed Vision 2035. This strategic plan is aimed at increasing social security coverage to 50% of the working population among other things. The Fund was doing this through financial literacy programs and creating jobs through its entrepreneurship program, Hi-innovator.
On retirement planning, Geoffrey Sajjabi, NSSF Chief Commercial Officer advised workers to consider constructing their residential houses before they retire to avoid depleting their NSSF savings on such unprofitable ventures, among other things.
According to the findings of a 2018 survey by the Fund, most retirees invest their pension in agriculture, business, land, rentals, cows, further education, school fees, medical bills or fixed deposits to earn an interest.
