Godfred Nimako Boateng, a member of the Pensioners Bondholders Forum says the entire government machinery should not be blamed for their woes but rather the Finance minister.
He has singled out Ken Ofori-Atta because he says it is his unpopular policies that has denied him and others access to their own investments.
He told Captain Smart on Maakye Thursday, May 11, 2023, when he joined the founder of the Pensioners Bondholders Forum, Dr. Adu Agyei Antwi to discuss the challenges they have been facing following the non payment of their coupons and subsequent picketing at the Finance Ministry.
He lamented “I had some money from my pension pay so I purchased some fixed deposit at Gold Coast Fund Management and you (Ken Ofori-Atta) blocked it. For five years I don’t get anything from there. The lump sum I got from SSNIT is what I used for treasury bill. But at a point at the NPP government regime, the treasury bill rate reduced to 11% so my bankers advised me that the bond is good so I diverted my funds to bonds and now you’re seizing the little funds I have in my bond.”
The old man continued by listing his frustrations amid his only source of income that has been blocked by the Finance Minister.
He averred “so we once had a meeting with the minister and I told him he is killing me. ‘By force killing’. You once seized my money elsewhere and you’re seizing this one too. I have no income anywhere and my kids who are out of school are unemployed so I don’t have any inflow from anywhere.”
The Pensioner Bondholders Forum is one of other bondholder groups that agitated for exemption from government’s Domestic Debt Exchange Programme which was one of the means for restructuring the nation’s debt as a condition for the IMF bailout.
Even though government promised to exempt them from the programne, it has refused to pay the pensioners their coupons which got matured last month making them beseech the ministry until they are sorted out.
