Business Reporter
EMPLOYEES can ask for their employment history, which shows the periods during which they contributed to the National Social Security Authority Pension and Other Benefits Scheme, at the NSSA stand at the Manicaland Agricultural Show, the company said this week.

In a statement, the company said this would enable them to confirm that NSSA does in fact have a record of the companies they have been employed at where they were contributing to the national pension scheme.
A computer at the stand will be online to NSSA's national database, enabling officials manning the stand to check such information using the employee's social security number.
Those who do not know their social security number can discover it by producing their national identity card and asking an official at the stand to use their national identity card number to find out for them their social security number.

The social security number allocated to an employee when he or she first registers with NSSA remains that employee's social security number for life.
When an employee changes employment he or she should include the social security number on the NSSA form that is completed at the new place of employment.
If an employee on checking the employment history finds that there is a period of employment during which contributions were made to NSSA which is not included in the employment history that NSSA has, that should be drawn to the attention of the official. 
If there is a missing period of employment, NSSA will need to check into why that is. It could be that the employer failed to pass onto NSSA the registration form and the contributions that were deducted from the individual's wages.

Those who suspect that their employer may not be passing on their contributions to NSSA can ask one of the officials at the stand to confirm whether or not the employer is submitting contributions to NSSA.
Every employer in the formal business sector is obliged by law to register each employee with NSSA and to deduct from every employee's wage the employee's national pension contribution and remit it, together with the corresponding employer's contribution, to NSSA.
Those who visit the NSSA stand will also be able to find out more about the benefits NSSA offers contributors and, in the event of their death, their dependants.
NSSA operates two schemes, the Pensions and Other Benefits Scheme and the Worker's Compensation Insurance Fund scheme.

The pension scheme is a retirement pension scheme that provides for a monthly pension for those who have contributed to the scheme for at least 10 years and a once-off retirement grant to those who have contributed for less than that but more than 12 months, when they reach the prescribed retirement age.