CAN A NEW PENSION SCHEME OFFER SECURITY TO INFORMAL WORKERS IN GHANA?

GENEVA — Month to month, an informal worker in Ghana can’t be sure exactly how much money she makes. Her wages depend on the market, the month and, sometimes, the weather. Despite this daily uncertainty, Sam Bediako Waterberg, CEO of the People’s Pension Trust, told Devex informal workers in Ghana are often more concerned about how long they will be able to work and being able to afford retirement.
“Bringing people on board is not that difficult,” Waterberg told Devex on the sidelines of the Social Good Summit in Geneva, Switzerland, on October 13. “People are really concerned about their pension, because they have seen older people suffering without a pension.”
As health care improves, Ghanaians are living longer. However, because 80 percent of Ghanaians are employed in the informal sector, the majority of aging workers have few options for safeguarding their health and well-being in the long term after they can no longer work.
Waterberg said the culture is also changing.
“In the past [people] were told their children are their pension, so a lot of people had four or five children hoping that one of them will take care of them,” he said. But now, “people are moving from the rural area to the urban area for work, leaving the parents to themselves without any support.”

Read more here: https://www.devex.com/news/can-a-new-pension-scheme-offer-security-to-informal-workers-in-ghana-91296