SSNIT pensioners go wild

Members of the Takoradi branch of the SSNIT Pensioners’ Association are angry with the national executives of the association over what they termed injustices being meted out to them.

According to them, the national officers started deducting GHc4.00 from each member’s meagre monthly allowance with a promise to institute a scheme known as Pension Mutual Scheme (PMS).

The current minimum wage of a SSNIT pensioner is GH¢303.00 per month.

“But it has been four years since they started deducting the GH¢4.00 and no account has been rendered to us the contributors,” they asserted.

They have therefore, called on the national officers to stop the deductions and refund the moneys deducted.

Addressing a press conference in Takoradi yesterday, George Francis Daniels, branch secretary of the association, noted that the scheme was rushed through without any feasibility studies or research.

He added that the PMS had been operated in an unacceptable and unsatisfactory manner.

“There are a lot of our members who have not received their so-called PMS cards for the past four years when the scheme was supposed to have taken off,”, he bemoaned.

Mr Daniels asserted that the scheme had been a total failure yet the deductions are still being done.

“Surprisingly, members who muster courage to question the scheme and make efforts to withdraw are met with hostile attitude by both the national and the regional officers of the association,” he disclosed.

He threatened that members of the association would be compelled to take legal action to retrieve their monies if the national officers failed to comply with their legitimate request.

Mr George Daniels appealed to the Board of SSNIT and the National Pension Regulatory Authority to mitigate the pensioners’ plight by granting additional five percent to the already 10 per cent by June 2018.

“The authorities should not forget that a lot of us pensioners retired before the Single Spine Salary policy was rolled out and therefore, granting a mere 10 percent is woefully inadequate to cater for our welfare,” he noted.

Mr Daniels therefore, vowed that members of the association in both the Western and the Central Regions would do everything within their power to make the national association transparent and accountable.