Former army chief welcomes NPP’s policy to review retirement age of soldiers

A retired Captain of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Budu Koomson has welcomed the New Patriotic Party’s decision to review the retirement age of military personnel if elected into power.

The NPP on Sunday announced that that it will review the defense strategy of the nation by adding five years to the retirement age of servicemen and women in the Ghana Armed Forces.

Sharing his thought on it, Captain Budu Koomson noted that the policy will play a key role in addressing the plight of servicemen. He was speaking in an interview with 3FM News.

“I think it’s a very welcoming proposition, I know that it’s a long standing agitation in the military because you have people entering as young as 20 years old or even maximum 25 and they are serving for 25 years.

If you took on a twenty year old boy he goes on pension at 45 how do you expect that 45 year old guy to feel, you are pensioning very able body people, trained, experienced and nobody in the corporate world is employing a forty five year old or forty six year old”.

He added “so we are actually increasing the frustration in the population of skilled able bodied unemployed people in the country and you know that our pensions are nothing worth talking too much about”. He explained that he sees no difficulty in funding the implementation of the policy by any government.

He argued that any government with much commitment and determination must be able to implement such a policy without difficulty.

“Our army is not a conscription army, it is not like the national service where everybody comes in, so if you know that your military capacity is ten thousand, fifteen thousand or twenty thousand and you know your demographics you plan accordingly, what is the difficulty with it?” he asked.