A couple of hundreds of people has today Monday March 7 thronged National Social Security Fund (NSSF) premises to apply for access to midterm benefits of their contributions.
In January, President Yoweri Museveni assented to the NSSF Bill, allowing 20 percent midterm access to the contributors who have saved for over 10 years and are 45 years old.
The bill also streamlined the supervision of the 15 trillion-shilling fund between the Ministries of Gender and of Finance. The workers, government, and the Gender committee agreed to have the Ministry of Gender supervise the social security aspect, while the Ministry of Finance will be in charge of the finance and investment aspects.
The bill also provided for voluntary savings and made it mandatory for employers to remit NSSF savings for workers irrespective of the number of employees.
As such, NSSF would later announce that receiving of applications would resume today. At a media dialogue on Monday on the next steps for midterm access, Richard Byarugaba, the NSSF Managing Director, said as of March 1, a total of 41,174 members were qualifying for access to midterm benefits and that notifications had already been sent to them.
“We expect about 41,174 qualifying members, as of March 1, 2022, who have updated their contact details will receive a confirmatory SMS,” he reiterates.
“We have sent an SMS to every person who qualifies if we have your number and so for those who have not received a message from NSSF, it means you don’t qualify or we don’t have your number or your details are not right,” Byarugaba adds.
He explained that to access the benefits, one will needs his or her NSSF number, passport photo, valid bank account, a phone number and a national identity card, all aimed at verifying ones identity.
According to Byarugaba, members can apply both online via nssfug.org/midterm or physically by visiting the Fund’s branches across the country.
NSSF has a total of 20 branches and sub-branches across the country. They will also, starting Wednesday, use Kololo independence grounds to receive applications.
The Fund has also offered to move to the premises of companies that have more than 150 qualifying employees to get their applications from there. Such companies according to NSSF, are 25 in number including Kakira Sugar Works Limited, Sugar Corporation of Uganda Limited, Bank of Uganda, Uganda Revenue Authority.
Meanwhile, at the Workers House (NSSF Headquarters) in Kampala, long queues of beneficiaries have Monday morning been seen outside the building and hundreds were already inside physically applying for the midterm access of their benefits. This according to Byarugaba, is an indicator that there is demand for this money.
“The numbers demonstrate that there is demand, even if the conditions are stringent, people want their money and we are doing all we can to ensure that they get it. The people you see here are the ones who opted to apply physically and we have put up three places to help them including our Corporate Social Centre, Voluntary office and registration services centre. Once we receive the application, we forward it for processing and the law requires us to process them with in 45 working days and we will ensure that we beat that deadline,” explains Byarugaba.
When to receive first payments
Byarugaba says as they continue to receive applications, the first payments will be effected on March 17 this years.
“We are doing that because we are testing the systems, we don’t want to rush, otherwise, every Thursday, we will pay out at least Shs50 billion and we hope that between now and the end of the year, we will have paid out one trillion shillings to qualifying members and we have that liquidity,” explained Byarugaba.
He however notes that for Mobile Money, only a maximum of Shs3 million can be paid.
“For mobile money, we can only pay up to 3 million shillings, we are trying to talk to Bank of Uganda – the owners of National Payments Systems Act hopefully to increase that limit and if they do, we will communicate to the public.
He says 57% of the payments will be below UGX10m. Qualifying members whose NSSF balances are below UGX 15 million can apply with 1656*4# on MTN and *18575# on Airtel.