The controversial $72 million software procured by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) is functioning despite an earlier claim to the contrary, Joy News reports.
According to the news report, painstaking investigations revealed that key modules of the Operating Business Suite (OBS) are working to expectation.
Out of the total 14 modules of the OBS, only one module – the compliance module – is yet to function at full capacity.
Current SSNIT Director-General, Dr John Kojo Ofori Tenkorang told Joy News in August, the entire software is not functioning despite the huge money spent on it.
He said the non-functioning of the software is due to alterations made on it and some legal regime regulating their operations.
But his predecessor, Ernest Thompson dismissed the claim, saying he was aware only one module was challenged.
“When I was in office, we realized that, that particular module was not giving us the correct figures that we wanted,” he told Joy News.
The initial cost of the software procured to automate processes at SSNIT was $34 million when it was awarded to Perfect Business Systems and Silver Lake Consortium in 2012. But this ballooned to $72 million, creating disaffection for the Trust.
Joy News’ Kwetey Nartey visited some SSNIT branches to access his pension contributions and expressed fascination at the speed his statement was printed.
He said: “within less than a minute I had my statement in hand…and updated my records.”
Joy News also established that the same SSNIT OBS was used by government to rid the payroll of over 50,000 ghost names.
A statement by the Finance Ministry said the cleaning of government’s payroll saved the country some ¢35 million.
Joy News’ Evans Mensah was emphatic that it will be bluntly “erroneous to simply say the OBS isn’t working without specifying which module is not working.”
But acting Corporate Affairs Director at SSNIT, Victoria Abedu said their argument was not that the entire software was not functioning.
“The system is not as we were thinking [and] we have always indicated that the system is working but some are not functional,” she clarified.
She defended the claim made by Dr Tenkorang, saying her boss was rather making reference to those systems that were not working.
Mrs Abedu said the non-functioning of the compliance module could derail the progress of the Trust if it is not addressed.
“Compliance is a big deal when it comes to social security operation so when the compliance module is not working then that is a big loss to SSNIT,” she said.
Source: Myjoyonline.com | Ghana