Has Mahama Ayariga Reckoned the Cost of Raising the Retirement Age?

Proposal by the National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament for Bawku-Central, in the Upper-East Region, to have the compulsory retirement age raised from 60 to 65 years old is clearly a vacuous propaganda ploy by the Parliamentary Minority Caucus that is purely aimed at scoring cheap political points, as it were (See “Mahama Ayariga wants Compulsory Retirement Age Extended from 60 to 65” Modernghana.com 2/17/21). Coming from Mr. Ayariga, the proposal looks rather ironic, scandalous and hypocritical since the sponsor of this otherwise quite progressive initiative made himself infamous in the matter of his import tax evasion litigation with the former Independent Special Prosecutor, namely, Mr. Martin ABK Amidu, in which rather than dutifully pay for his crime, the Bawku native made extravagant capital out of the age of Mr. Amidu, in what I facetiously labeled at the time as “The Frafra Games.”

It is also amusing that instead of commending President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for heroically reviving the Kufuor-implemented National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), which the previous John “Expedition-Kanazoe” Dramani Mahama-led regime of the National Democratic Congress had royally bungled, Mr. Ayariga has unconscionably chosen to conveniently take this epic Akufo-Addo achievement for granted, by using a significantly improved National Health Insurance Scheme to home in on his proposal for the upping of the compulsory retirement age from 60 to 65 years old. Now, what the John “Airbus” Dramani Mahama pet lieutenant clearly does not appear to have taken into account before putting forth his proposal is the even much more significant fiscal impact and expenditure that this 60-month upping of the compulsory retirement age of our civil and public servants is apt to have on the country’s economy, amidst the serious ravages of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

You see, you just cannot simply raise the compulsory retirement age without also sitting down to seriously, soberly and critically calculate the cost. Which, of course, is not to say or imply that the leaders of the National Democratic Congress are well-known for their fiscally responsible governance of the country. The diametrically opposite profile is strikingly more like the putative mirror image of the leadership of the National Democratic Congress. The preceding notwithstanding, of course, a good idea or proposal is what it veritably is, no matter who happens to be proposing the same. By the same token, however, it is equally refreshing to hear Mr. Ignatius Baffuor Awuah, the Employment and Labor Relations Minister-Designate, pointedly remind the Bawku-Central MP of the even more pressing job-security needs of our youths. You see, raising the compulsory retirement age by five years would also delay the entry of qualified freshman/-woman professionals into the civil and public service. Instead, what shameless public relations propagandists like Mr. Ayariga ought to be advocating are ways of creating meaningful, lucrative and sustainable jobs with productive futures for our youths.

Taking the cheap, tawdry and the metaphorical primrose path would only result in further complicating an already acutely unbearable situation. Already, a lot of jobs that ought not to have been lost to our civil and public service system have been painfully lost, primarily as a direct result of the COVID-19 Pandemic. So, at this stage what we first and foremost ought to be talking about is the “Voluntary Retirement Age” (VRA). In my line of work, for example, the VRA is 57½ years old. The National or Federal Retirement Age, here in the United States – and I stand to be corrected – has been about 62 years old for women and 65 years old for men. In the recent past, there has been talk of raising the retirement age for men to 67 years old. This has been primarily due to a combination of factors, including the Federal Government’s misuse or, rather, misapplication of retirement savings and investments, largely in funding or underwriting America’s expensive foreign policy agenda, largely fighting wars and asserting America’s dominance and military might in global affairs.

In Ghana, the problem has been one of the criminal misappropriation or, properly speaking, embezzlement of such critical investment resources by kleptocratic politicians, such as the $ 72 Million (USD) Mega-Theft that occurred at the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), under the watch of former President Mahama and Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, at the time the Employment and Labor Relations Minister and, presently, Leader of the NDC’s Parliamentary Minority Caucus. Calibrating the Compulsory Retirement Age ought to be squarely based on the Average-Life-Expectancy Rate in the country, not merely because many civil and public servants are choosing to have children relatively late in life who need to be adequately taken care of. Now, this is a commonsense choice that ought not to burden the Government. Then also, college-age adult children, just as I did here in the United States in my time, must be readily availed a combination of loan and grant facilities to pursue their tertiary academic and professional studies and degrees.

Other than health insurance, the burden of their academic and professional education and development must be squarely borne by these young adults themselves. The perennially paralyzing culture of government/public handouts ought not to become the legacy which we leave our children and grandchildren. We need to educate our youths to become more self-reliant, creative and resourceful agenda-setting citizens, not mendicants or beggars and freeloaders.

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

February 17, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]