Former Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo has added her voice to calls for pensioners to be excluded from the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).
According to her, the decision to include pensioners in the programme should be the last resort if all other interventions fail.
Mrs Akuffo said that a country’s problems cannot only be solved at expense of the senior citizens.
“I find it totally wrong because you don’t solve your problems by sacrificing your aged. That is the last thing you should do especially when you don’t have services that are specially geared at the comfort and the relief of the aged,” she said.
Speaking to JoyNews on Friday, the former Justice said, she finds it disrespectful to include the aged who depend solely on their pension funds for survival.
She added that it was illegal to breach the investment contract adding that “it’s important that the elderly should be respected. I find it wicked, I find it disrespectful find it unlawful.”
The stateswoman queried why the government should dictate the terms of payment of the yields of the pensioner’s investment without explaining how the country got into ‘this mess.’
“Force them to agree with you that the repayment or the yield of their investment should be as you dictate it. Why? And at the same time why are we in the mess we are in? Nobody has fully explained it to us. Yes debt, okay fine you took debt what was it used for, where is the accountability,” Madam Akuffo lamented.
She advised the government to take steps to solve the problem before asking pensioners to contribute to alleviating the economic problem.
The former Chief Justice joined the pensioners at the week-long picketing at the Finance Ministry to demand a total exclusion from the DDEP.
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.
Friday, February 10, is the fifth consecutive day members of the forum have shown up at the Ministry.
The government has proposed a 15% coupon rate. But the group of about 50 retirees, amid singing patriotic Ghanaian songs, have rejected same.
