Uganda’s retirement benefits body, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has recovered up to Shs1.8billion through information provided over its web-based whistle blower platform, Barbra Teddy Arimi, the Fund’s Head of Marketing and Communications has revealed.
Launched in January 2017, the platform is meant to be used by aggrieved employees (whistle blowers) to report employers who fail to remit their contributions to the Fund, as required by the law.
“Over the past month, we received information from over 140 whistle blowers. Up to 90% of the cases received were through the NSSF Whistleblower platform, hence proving that it is one of the Fund’s most effective tools to increase compliance levels and recover billions of employees’ contributions meant for their retirement,” said Arimi.
The Platform is crafted in line with the whistleblowers’ Act in such a way that the people reporting remain anonymous to protect them from harassment or penalization by their employers.
The NSSF Act 1985 Section 11 (1) provides that all employers with five or more employees are required to remit monthly contributions for their employees within 15 days, following the last day of the month for which the relevant wages are paid.
The employers deduct 5 per cent of their workers salary and top it up with a 10 per cent contribution and remit the 15 per cent to the Fund for every employee.
According to Ms Arimi, more than 25,000 employers are meant to pay NSSF contributions. Monthly although 12,000 of these are not complying and of the 13,000 who are complying, only 8,900 are consistently remitting NSSF contributions for their employees.
