President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says by February 2019, the auditing of the Temporary Pensions Fund Account (TPFA) of public sector workers will be completed.
According to the President, “The relevant institutions have been tasked to complete this exercise to enable the smooth implementation of the second tier pension scheme (the occupational pension scheme) in the public services,â€.
President Akufo-Addo said funds transferred into public sector occupational pension schemes, facilitated by the Minister of Finance and the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, with the active involvement of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), were a little over GH¢3 billion and had paved the way for the real implementation of the third tier pension schemes of public sector workers.
In a speech delivered on his behalf by the Chief of Staff, Mrs Akosua Frema Osei Opare, at the 13th Quadrennial National Delegates Congress of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) in Cape Coast last Friday (January 4, 2018), the President said the government was committed to meeting the needs of CLOGSAG.
According to the speech, most of the critical issues facing CLOGSAG had been resolved with regard to the payment of interim premium to workers within the Civil and the Local Government services.
The Congress, which had in attendance delegates from across the country, was on the theme: “Neutrality within the Civil and Local Government services has ramifications for the Civil and Local Government servicesâ€.
President Akufo-Addo said the government, through a new Public Sector Reform Strategy, intended to build a government machinery that worked.
It was premised on various institutional reforms, as well as the strengthening of the capacity of public sector institutions to deliver public goods and services efficiently, he said.
The President added that other specific strategies to be implemented included re-aligning institutions to address conflicting mandates and improve coordination, modernising public service institutions for efficiency and productivity, improving leadership capability and delivery in the public service and improving accountability in the public service by introducing a Citizen’s Charter.
 Civil servants and staff of the Local Government Service were urged by President Akufo-Addo to refrain from engaging in partisan politics, saying: “Don’t cloak yourselves with political attire in the dispatch of your duties.â€
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He said being intermediaries between the government and the wider public, Local Government Service workers would have to show, at all levels, that they were professional in what they did and thereby create a more favourable image for the service.
Otherwise “you offend the sensibilities of the public and place yourself in a bias position which is distasteful and offensive to any well-meaning government,†he stated.
The President commended CLOGSAG for pursuing a just cause by seeking the interpretation of clauses in the 1992 Constitution on the participation and involvement of its members in partisan politics and district assembly elections.
“Let us continue to use legitimate means to address issues in order to promote sanity in the industrial atmosphere in our country,†President Akufo-Addo stated.