Majority Chief Whip Rockson Nelson Dafeamekpor has criticized what he describes as growing abuse in the application of post-retirement contracts in Ghana’s public sector, calling it a distortion of public service norms and a worrying trend that must be checked.
Speaking on the matter, Dafeamekpor said the issue isn’t with the law, but with how it’s applied in real life.
“The law will define the letter and the spirit. But practice is what is concerned about. It’s the abuse,” he stated.
According to him, the law allows for a two-two-one (2-2-1) post-retirement contract — a system that gives retirees a possible two-year extension, renewable once, and a final one-year term. But Dafeamekpor says this legal leeway is now being exploited by some individuals with political influence.
“Somebody who has attained 60 and has political connections gets retained and takes the 2-2-1 opportunity,” he lamented on TV3’s KeyPoints on April 12.
“But you see people, birthday is birthday. People attain 60 every day.”
He painted a picture of public institutions where month after month, eligible retirees are passed over for contract renewals while a select few are allowed to remain, often indefinitely, through political clout.
“You can have an institution where in every month there’s a senior man who is attaining 60 and is due for retirement. But he doesn’t get the opportunity to have a contract. That is where the concern is.”
Dafeamekpor questioned the fairness of a system that allows one person to enjoy multiple post-retirement terms while others, equally qualified, are denied even one.
“The person knows that his deputy who is me is also attaining 60, and yet, he won’t go. For me to also get opportunity to also have the extended contract terms of two years. He wants to go the full haul.”
He added, “I would have been compelled to go on retirement upon attaining 60 without the opportunity of having the 2-2-1 stay on. This is the abuse that everybody is questioning.”
Dafeamekpor said the abuse is so entrenched that it now defeats the purpose of such contracts — which were originally designed for rare exigencies and to support institutional continuity.
“The law expects that when there is a vacancy… the situation of exigency. That is why it is abused. The exigency of the office is being abused in practice.”
He also echoed concerns from labour unions, notably the Trades Union Congress (TUC), about how political interference is skewing public service integrity.
“You don’t have public servants who are public servants. You have public servants who also want to be politicians,” he said. “So, they conduct themselves in a very partisan manner. And in doing so, they get opportunity to do this 2-2-1 post-retirement contract.”
Meanwhile, he claimed that public servants who stay politically neutral often lose out.
“The public servant who hasn’t conducted himself in a partisan way gets denied. These are the forms of abuse that everybody frowns on.”
The post Suspension of post-retirement contract: The challenge is with how it is applied – Dafeamekpor first appeared on 3News.
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