Pension Bondholders to demo against Domestic Debt Exchange programme

Pensioner Bond­holders say they will embark on a peaceful demonstration Mon­day if the government fails to respond to their petition to exempt them from the Domestic Debt Exchange Pro­gramme (DDEP).

According to them, a petition they submitted to the government and other relevant stakeholders last Wednesday had not received any positive response.

They argued that, they should be given the same exemption given to Pension Funds being regulated by the National Pensions Regulatory Authority.

The basis for the exemption of the Pension Funds by the govern­ment was to ensure that pension incomes to would-be retirees were not impaired for them to become burden on others when on retire­ment.

Former Director- General of Securities and Exchange Commis­sion, Dr Adu A. Antwi speaking at the press conference in Accra yesterday said they recognised the heavy schedule of the Finance Min­ister, Ken Ofori-Atta and hope he finds time to meet them before the government invitation period ended yesterday at 4:00pm.

“What we intend doing is to see if we can get the minister to meet with us on this pe­tition since we said we were expecting him before 4pm today, After this conference, a rep­resentative of the forum would go to the ministry and see if we can get the minister for a short meeting and tell us what has been done so far,” he said.

Dr Antwi em­phasised that, they would undertake the intended demonstration if the result did not turn out positive with the minister.

“We believe that we will get the positive response to our case and if we do not, we have already notified the police that we would converge at the Ministry of Finance seeking to speak with the Minister,” he stated.

Although, they have a mem­bership of about four hundred pensioners, Dr Antwi said fifty of them would represent them at the premises of the Ministry due to the ailing conditions of most of their members.

He also noted that, they had asked the Ministry of Finance to exclude all pensioner government bondholders from the government Domestic Debt Exchange Programme, as the impact of the program would be severe to the bondholders.

“We believe that the government would heed to our request to pro­tect this vulnerable group from the hardship this exchange programme would bring to them,” Dr Antwi said.

BY CECILIA LAGBA

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