Akatsi retirees protest poor SSNIT pensions
Some pensioners in the southern part of the Volta Region on Wednesday embarked on a peaceful protest to demand a better pension package from the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT).
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The aggrieved pensioners, wearing red armbands and carrying placards, marched through the streets of Akatsi before presenting a petition to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo through the Akatsi South District Chief Executive, Mr Leo-Nelson Adzidogah.
Some of the placards had inscriptions such as: “Treat SSNIT pensioners well, we’re also Ghanaians”, “Govt, didn’t we also serve the nation?”, “We want better pension through single spine” and “Mr President, have mercy on pensioners”.
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Petition
The petition, delivered by the Chairman of the Southern Volta SSNIT Pensioners Association, Mr Francis Kudzo Gottah, decried the huge disparity between the pension benefits of SSNIT pensioners and those of their counterparts under the CAP 30 pension scheme.
“While a retired director under CAP 30 draws GH¢50,000 as gratuity from the government, a SSNIT pensioner of the same rank takes home only GH¢7,000 as lump sum,” it said.
It said the disparity in pension pay was discriminatory, since both the SSNIT and the CAP 30 categories of workers were employees of the same government and deserved to enjoy equal benefits.
It said the pensioners could not fathom why, after their long years of dedicated service to the state, they would only be entitled to meagre monthly stipends under SSNIT, while the privileged few under CAP 30 enjoyed better conditions.
It, therefore, made a passionate appeal to President Akufo-Addo to intervene and harmonise the two pension schemes to ensure equity and fairness.
Additionally, the petition appealed to the government to review the age limit of SSNIT pensioners’ life expectancy from 72 years to the time of their death, while “the annual minimum wage policy should not be limited to only pensioners under CAP 30, since the government benefits very substantially from the SSNIT contributions of its employees countrywide”.