Don’t touch our pensions in your debt restructuring programme – SSA-UoG

The Senior Staff Association-Universities of Ghana (SSA-UoG) has warned the government not to touch their pensions in its debt restructuring programme.

In a statement, the Association said the programme was insensitive to the economic conditions which keep worsening by the day.

“We, the Senior Staff of Public Universities in Ghana, see this action by the government as insensitive behaviour towards the ordinary Ghanaian worker who continues to render invaluable services to Mother Ghana. Even under these unbearable and harsh economic conditions. Which can, at best, be described as self-inflicted by the very people who were supposed to initiate policies towards alleviating the unabated suffering of the ordinary Ghanaian.

“We will, therefore, resist this insensitive action by the Government with the last drop of our blood and insist that under no circumstance should government touch our hard-earned pension contributions,” the statement warned.

“We are sounding a word of caution to the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), our Fund Managers, (Petra Trust), and our Board of Trustees, to ensure that our contributions are not affected by this so-called ‘Debt Restructuring Programme,” SSA-UoG said in its statement.

“We believe that these measures will go a long way to help reduce the expenditure of the Government, and by extension, improve Ghana’s debt situation rather than the haircutting of individuals’ investments. We want to take this opportunity to appeal to the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations as a matter of urgency, to carry out a recalculation of all the accrued interest on our Tier-2,” the Association added.