Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo has rejected the inclusion of pensioners in the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme (DDEP).
According to her it is wickedness for the government to sacrifice the profits of people who have worked their entire lives serving the country, just so that it can solve its own problems of fixing the economy.
READ ALSO: Former CJ Sophia Akuffo joins bondholders to picket at Finance Ministry
She said the last thing the Akufo-Addo government should have been done was to think of touch pension funds.
““I am over 70 years now, I am no longer government employed, my mouth has been ungagged and I am talking and I am saying that we have failed and it is important that the elderly should be respected. I find this wicked; I find it disrespectful; I find it unlawful; I find it totally wrong. Period. Because you don’t solve your problems by sacrificing your aged. That’s the last thing you should do especially when we don’t have any services that are specially geared at the comfort and the relief of the aged,” Sophia Akuffo told the media on Friday.
She further criticized the government for not being able to account for the borrowings done over the years.
“Why are we in the mess? Nobody has fully explained to us, yes we took debt, what was it used for? and where is the accountability? Exactly what was it used for? You are not telling us about how you are going to be able to make things better but just that ‘help me and I help you’, no, you help yourself first, let me see you doing something serious because we have seen these sorts of things too many times.
Sophia Akuffo on Friday, February 10 joined the pensioners picketing at the Ministry of Finance in Accra over the government's domestic debt exchange programme.
Mrs Akuffo was seen holding a placard with the inscription ‘We depend our bond yields to pay our rent, medical bills, electricity bills and water bills.’
It was the fifth time that members of the Pensioner Bondholders Forum were picketing at the Finance Ministry to demand a total exemption of their investments from the Domestic Debt Exchange programme.