A retired Captain of the Ghana Army, Ebeneezer Budu-Koomson, has said the opposition New Patriotic Party\u2019s (NPP) proposal to review upwards the period before retirement for army recruits would be a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
Whilst calling for \u201cdispassionate discussion and planning\u201d on such a proposal, he stated that, such a move would at the very least prevent army personnel from being forced to retire and possibly add to unemployment statistics.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”KTExegifoQREg6W2LbtNe1gdjDmYyQAu”]Currently, the recruits retire after 25 years, but the NPP has\u00a0indicated its intent to extend the period before retirement by five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t continue to the do the same things the same way and expect new results; so it is good. Let us look at it dispassionately and if it will solve some problems, let us look at it and solve the problems,\u201d Captain Koomson said on Eyewitness News<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the moment, I am in corporate Ghana. At 45, you are looking at very well experienced, healthy talented people trained at the expense of the state; and you send\u00a0them out to be unemployed. This situation should make us pause and start thinking through properly what we do with our planning.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe are throwing away able-bodied well trained men and we are lucky they haven\u2019t used their skills for negative work,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Captain Budu-Koomson also downplayed suggestions that extending the stay of recruits by five years would leave the army saddled with personnel too old to function effectively.<\/p>\n Buttressing his\u00a0argument, Captain Budu-Koomson said; \u201cWhat is the demographic in the military as we speak? Is it so that if you have a lopsided old age army so if we start saying that we are planning to extend the retirement age or the time we can spend within the period; then suddenly we have about 50 percent of them walking on crutches?\u201d<\/p>\n NPP to review Army retirement age upwards<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The Chairman of the NPP’s sub-committee on Defense and Interior, \u00a0and MP for Bimbila, Dominic Nitiwul, who confirmed this to journalists, said: \u201cwe believe that the men and women of the Ghana Armed Forces will not be focused more on combat any longer. They will be more focused on terrorism, cyber-crime, helping the people, engaging in things that will support the nation as well as defend the territorial integrity of this nation.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe convention of allowing our men to retire after serving 25 years particularly the other ranks, we will be reviewing it to look at the possibility of adding five more years.\u00a0That means that, unless you want to retire voluntarily, you would have the opportunity to retire after 30 years in the force,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Mr. Nitiwul explained that, this proposal is in the name of equity explaining that, \u201cif a civil servant is allowed to retire at 60 years, you don\u2019t ask somebody in the army to retire at 45 years if he enters at 20 years and then he goes home and has nothing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A retired Captain of the Ghana Army, Ebeneezer Budu-Koomson, has said the opposition New Patriotic Party\u2019s (NPP) proposal to review upwards the period before retirement for army recruits would be a step in the right direction. Whilst calling for \u201cdispassionate discussion and planning\u201d on such a proposal, he stated that, such a move would at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":263845,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n