Ghanaian legislators demand welfare package after tenure

Legislators in Ghana's parliament Wednesday called for a pension fund for their members to support them after exiting the house.

This, according to them, is to help members to maintain some decent standard of living.

Joe Gidisu, former Transport Minister under the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) and Member of Parliament (MP) for Central Tongu Constituency in the Volta Region, some 156 km east of here, bemoaned the poor living conditions of some former law makers.

"They think that when you leave the chamber, you are still that same person when you were in parliament and therefore everybody is hammering on this issue that there is something that we need to do to think about the welfare of members who have devoted their time even sometimes at the peril of their lives," he said.

The life of the country's current parliament comes to an end on the midnight of January 6, 2017, the eve of swearing in of a new government.

Most of the legislators, especially those exiting, are already complaining about securing jobs after leaving the legislature.

Already, some 16 and 21 MPs from the governing NDC and opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) respectively will not be returning to the country's legislature next year because they lost their seats in their party's parliamentary primaries.

With some 35 days for the West African country to vote in major presidential and parliamentary elections on December 7, some sitting MPs are likely to lose their seats in the general election. Endit