By David Mugabe

The National Social Security Fund (NSSF) will this week publish the names of about 26,125 workers who have not registered with the fund but whose companies have been remitting their monthly savings.

Olive Lumonya, the NSSF chief marketing manager, said the move is to encourage employees to look for their names in the newspapers, register and then begin to monitor their savings. About sh10b deposited by employees is not registered in the names of the beneficiaries.

“Registration is an individual responsibility, but at the same time, there are people who have started working but they have never registered,” said Lumonya.

She said there are people who have been working but have never registered and the current figure dates back to about 2005. Eighteen pages of adverts will run in the media, according to Lumonya.

Under the law, 5% is deducted from the worker’s salary and the employer matches it with 10%, constituting the 15% in savings.

Workers contribution has grown to about sh2.8 trillion, while there are currently about 500,000 workers saving with NSSF.

It is expected that liberalization of the sector will release a huge financial muscle for investments and savings for the country. Currently, NSSF is limited by law on how much or how far it can invest, including investing within East Africa only.

The current savings, about $700m, is still very small because of the large informal sector and low saving culture. This compares badly with Kenya’s $6b, which represented 13.2% of GDP in 2011.