The Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), has extended the deadline for members of the Scheme to merge their SSNIT and Ghana Card numbers to June 30, 2022.

The initial deadline was December 31, 2021.

From July 1, 2022, SSNIT says the Ghana Card will be the only identification number it recognizes.

“This is in compliance with Regulation 7 (1) of the National Identity Register Regulations, 2012, L.I. 2111, which requires the use of the Ghana Card as identification for “transactions pertaining to individuals in respect of pensions” and “transactions that have social security implications”,” it explained in a statement.

Employers will be required to use only the Ghana Card numbers of their workers to process Contribution Reports and make payments.

Voluntary contributors will also have to pay their contributions using their Ghana Card numbers.

The trust warned that “members who fail to merge their SSNIT and NIA numbers will be denying themselves access to pensions and other social security related services from SSNIT.”

It also stated that “there will be no further extension beyond the 30th June, 2022 deadline.”

The mergers began on June 28, 2021, where SSNIT deployed systems to members of the Scheme to merge their SSNIT and Personal ID numbers on their Ghana Cards.

However, not all SSNIT cardholders have been able to go through the merging process, with a majority blaming it on the inaccessibility of the Ghana Cards.

As of December 31, there were over 500,000 members of the Trust who had not merged their Ghana Card with their SSNIT numbers.

This had prompted the National Identification Authority to propose an extension of the deadline given by the SSNIT for members of the scheme to merge their SSNIT and Ghana Card numbers.

Ghanaians are racing against time to register for the Ghana Card with the deadline to re-register SIM cards being March 31, 2022.