Mr Kofi Asamoah, Secretary General of Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC), on Tuesday stressed the need for unionised workers and government to collaborate to improve on workers' salaries and
wages to enable them to retire with dignity.
"If you want improved pensions, we need to work on salaries and wages.
Our level of pay is what translates into our pensions. If government wants us to retire in style then we all have a collective role to improve on salaries," he added.
Mr Asamoah made the call at the opening session of a day's workshop on the third tier of the New Pension Scheme in Accra.
The workshop, organised in collaboration with management of Frontline Capital Advisors (FCA) Limited, aimed at introducing 18 affiliate members of GTUC to guidelines that had been issued by the National Pensions Regulatory Authority with special emphasis on management of Provident Funds.
Mr Asamoah observed that before the enactment of 2008 Pension Act (Act 766), workers after working for a long time and on retiring, ended up as paupers.
He said some workers when getting closer to retirement either reviewed their ages or even hesitated to go on retirement and under the three tier of the Scheme, it behoved on workers to be interested in the management of provident funds.
Mr Asamoah noted that some establishments had established various schemes but regretted that their contributions were not being invested as those contributions were only lying in banks.
He therefore implored workers to appoint fund managers to manage contributions properly in order to yield better results.
Mr Asamoah said GTUC was determined to ensure that workers retired "in style" and urged the participants to exhaust rudiments of the three tier pension scheme to educate their colleagues.
Mr Clifford D. Mpare, Chief Executive Officer of FCA said a review of the pensions reforms in the country indicated that workers needed a safety net in order that the labour market could grow and expand the capital market.
He implored unionised workers to create a network so that they could exchange information on other public retirement systems and alternate
various issues confronting them.
Mr Mpare noted that the scheme had favourable tax concessions and urged members to register their scheme so that they could enjoy those tax concessions.
Mrs Edith Kufuor, Director of Marketing and Client Service, FCA, tasked members to invest in Provident Funds and be part of the planning process of any investment policy and establish realistic goals for the provident funds.
She said to initiate a provident fund, a trust deed needed to be legally established to furnish its operations.
Mrs Kufuor said FCA was ready to assist all its clients to draft a deed adding "we are in the process of setting up provident funds for other
professional associations and unions in the country.
FCA was established in the USA to provide investors' access to Africa. Its subsidiary in Ghana, among others, operates as an investment advisory, consultancy and professional retirement and pension fund management to individuals, corporate government and institutional clients.