Baba Amadu, a former driver of the Upper East Regional Coordinating Council at Bolgatanga has refused to cash a cheques for ?89,000 paid to him as his gratuity for his 33 years service to the state.

He has also decided not to collect the ?44.12 monthly pension allotted to him by the state for his public service. Consequently, the pensioner had kept the cheques uncashed for the past nine years. Mr. Amadu narrated his case to the Presidential Commission on Pensions at its sittings at Bolgatanga. He said that he joined the Civil Service in 1962 and retired in 1995. Testifying before the Commission, Mr. Amadu said the cheques were still in his possession. At that stage, the chairman of the Commission, Mr. T.A. Bediako, asked him to go and bring it, which he hurriedly did.

Some civil and public servants who also testified said they were disillusioned, and accused workers of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) of flagrant misuse of workers contributions. They alleged that this had been demonstrated in the lifestyles of some of the workers.

Furthermore, they said SSNT workers had arrogated to themselves the powers to grant themselves huge loans from workers contributions while other workers had been ignored.

To this end, they suggested that SSNIT should grant loans to contributing workers too to enable them to put up their own houses, pointing out that this would go a long way to help them alleviate their accommodation when they are on retirement.

The called for the immediate decentralisation of the payment of workers? pension that is ? CAP 30 and the SSNIT Pensions Scheme in view of the growing discontent about the mode of payment to their beneficiaries.

Some retired workers suffered serious setbacks in their efforts to collect their benefits from Accra,? they said, stressing that some of those retirees who travelled to Accra spent some of the scanty amounts with them in collecting their benefits. ?Some beneficiaries have died as a result of the painful ordeal they have been going through,? the stated further.