NSSF, police to ensure security companies remit workers’ contributions

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has established a partnership with Uganda Police Force to ensure that private security companies in the country comply with the remittance of social security contributions for their employees by way of making possession of NSSF clearance mandatory.

The ceremony to establish the partnership was held at Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala on Thursday.

The partnership will help security companies’ employees who fear that they will retire in poverty if their employers continue with the habit of not remitting their NSSF contributions.

Under the partnership, the security companies will now be required to obtain an NSSF clearance certificate as a prerequisite for an annual operation license.

“We received over 245 complaints through our whistle blower platform from employees of private security companies between January 2018 and February 2019. That prompted us to carry out compliance audits and from our analysis, we found that over 7,000 workers’ contributions had not been fully remitted to NSSF,” said NSSF Deputy Managing Director Patrick Ayota.

He said that recovering of the contributions has been difficult mostly because the security companies under-declare information like the number of employees and salaries paid. He said they also withhold financial records during social security audits.

“I encourage employers to compile because the benefit doesn’t go to the Fund but to the security guard and your organisations’ reputation,” he said.

The NSSF Head of Business, Geoffrey Ssajjabi stated that, ”Security companies are one of the biggest defaulting employers registered with the Fund, security guards play a very crucial role in our society and lives and it is vital that we take care of their future.”

On the issue of NSSF not paying benefits to its members, the Corporate Relationship Manager, Ian J. Mwesigwa stated that the Fund paid out over Shs400 billion to eligible members in the last financial year.