Wa, Sept. 10, GNA - Mr. Reynold Ofosu Tenkorang, Deputy General Secretary of the Health Services Workers Union (HSWU), has stated that public sector workers could not negotiate new collective agreements with their employers.

He said the Fair Wages and Salary Commission (FWSC) was still grappling with their migration onto the single spine salary structure, which must happen before new CBAs could begin.

The processes towards the migration of the health workers onto the structure, he noted, had not been completed and it was therefore not possible that they would be brought on board by the end of September this month.

Mr Tenkorang was speaking at a symposium to mark the Health Services Workers' week celebration in the Upper West Region at Wa recently under the theme: Social Protection the Backbone to Quality Life Before and During Retirement".

The symposia, which is ongoing nationwide, seeks to educate members of the union on their rights as workers and the necessity to prepare adequately in order to live decent lives after retirement.

Mr. Tenkorang regretted that instead of retirement being a time for rest, reflection and happy moments for the individual, it had rather become a time for stress, shock, loneliness, social exclusion and isolation.

He attributed this to improper planning by workers towards retirement and insensitive posture of employers in designing retirement packages that adequately cushion workers when they retire.

He advised all workers to begin to practice retirement by reducing their expenditures, invest part of the income and desist from relying on their children to take care of them during retirement because that could not be guaranteed.

Mr. Abudu Abudul-Karim, Wa Branch Manager of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), urged contributors to the Scheme to endeavour to visit their offices frequently to update their records to avoid any future difficulties in the payment of benefits arising out of death.

He appealed to workers to assess the situation very well when signing as guarantors for student loans because this could cause delays in the payment of pensions during retirement.

According to him, many recent retirees had their cheques ready, but they could not receive them because the students they guaranteed for had made no effort to redeem their indebtedness to SSNIT.