A struggling Financial House and the plight of retirees
Yesterday, one of my Facebook followers sent me an unexpected message.
baasco2006
Yesterday, one of my Facebook followers sent me an unexpected message.
"Good morning, [name withheld] pensioner," was her first statement. Could we please talk about a few things? I need to call you on the phone, please. I immediately provided her with my contact info. Is it convenient to call at this time, she continued. The call arrived even before I had a chance to respond yes or no. When she retired, this pensioner invested money with this finance house. Before this finance house began to have liquidity issues, she made an investment of GHS 20,000.
She still has a bit more than GHS 8,000 locked up and unrecovered as of this writing. She was forced to seek for a pension loan from a bank using her monthly SSNIT pension as collateral due to the challenges of the locked-up funds. She is finding it challenging to make ends meet due to the rising cost of living. After deducting the debt, her monthly take-home pay is little about GHS 1,000.
She sounded really concerned about her monthly medical checkups and bills. She wondered as to if I could help her by exerting pressure on the Central Bank to unfreeze the payments for her and other retirees in her situation. This is the hard reality of what pensioners go through in Ghana.
This is more serious if we do not build up a personal pension fund in addition to SSNIT while working.
Let's start building up our personal pension funds today. Our children are no longer our retirement savings. In the meantime, can someone help get assistance for our mother? I would be glad if this post was shared to get the attention of those in authority. I appreciate your audience, guys.
