Teachers want flexibility in retirement documents

Wa, June 23, GNA - Eighty-nine teachers who are to go on retired this year in the Upper West Region are facing difficulties in processing their documents to enable them to benefit from the "Cap 30" pension scheme.

Many of the teachers have lost their documents including certificates and promotion letters, while others too have their documents mutilated and cannot process them at the Accountant Generals Department for their benefits.

Mr. Matthew Bonye, Upper West Regional Pensions and Welfare Officer for the Ghana Education Service, who made this known in a statement in Wa on Tuesday, said the Accountant Generals Department was demanding many documents and other particulars from the teachers before processing their benefits.

He said because many of the teachers had taught in rural schools throughout their working lives, some of them had lost their certificates and promotion letters due to transfers and in disasters such as fires and floods.

Others also did not know where to trace their documents to enable them to present them to the Accountant Generals Departments. Mr. Bonye said in that circumstance, many of the teachers had become frustrated and some had died as a result, thereby making it difficult for the next of kin to process the documents for their benefits.

He suggested that the Accountant Generals Department should make the procedure flexible for the teachers because there was no way the teachers could find those documents the Accountant Generals Department was requesting for.

Mr. Bonye called for the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to open files and to document all the necessary particulars of employees of the Ghana Education Service to avoid the dilemma teachers go through when going on retirement.

He also called on the government to make the Social Security and National Trust Fund (SSNIT) pension attractive to workers, pointing out that the present pension was inadequate and was contributing to the woes of pensioners and their families.