Former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo is worried about the fate of pensioners who are crying out against the inclusion of their funds in the ongoing debt restructuring.
The stateswoman finds it unfair that her colleagues will be subjected to the ordeal through the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme being undertaken by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta.
According to her, as long as the situation has to do with the contractual rights of pensioners, she cannot sit unconcerned.
“I’m seeing it purely from a legal point of view, their contractual rights being threatened. Then I have to say something. I have to join them in solidarity. Their pain is my pain because I have retired sisters, I have retired friends, and so on and so forth,” she said on Friday.
The former Chief Justice was spotted picketing the Finance Ministry along with aggrieved pensioners demanding the exemption of retirees’ investments from the programme.
She hoisted a placard with the inscription ‘We depend on our bond yields to pay our rent, medical bills, electricity bills and water bills.’
Speaking to JoyNews, she said her ample retirement benefits by virtue of her position does not prevent her from solidarising with others in a contrary predicament.
The former Chief Justice described the DDE programme as wicked and unlawful.
“I find it wicked, I find it disrespectful, I find it unlawful, I find it totally wrong, period! Because you don’t solve your problems by sacrificing your aged. That is the last thing you should do,” she told JoyNews.
Meanwhile, the picketing pensioners are currently locked up in a meeting with officials of the Ministry to deliberate on the way forward.
Members of the Pensioner Bondholders Forum on Monday, February 6, began picketing the Finance Ministry to demand a total exemption of their investments from the Domestic Debt Exchange programme.
Today is the fifth consecutive day members of the forum have showed up at the Ministry.
Government has proposed a 15% coupon rate. But the group of about 50 retirees, amid singing patriotic Ghanaian songs, have rejected same.
SOURCE: JoyNews
