Unpaid state pensioners deserved better

One of the biggest advantages of a secure job is not just being able to pay for your monthly expenses, but also knowing that every month a small amount is squirrelled away so that one day when you retire you can rest easy, knowing that you are provided for because of the decades you spent paying into a pension fund. Not so if you are one of the 19,800 former state employees in the Eastern Cape who are owed a whopping R700m.

Despite the state-run Government Pensions Administration Agency (GPAA) having had 24 years to see to it that these apartheid-era civil servants who worked mostly in the former Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei homelands were paid, they have been deprived of their wealth and dignity for decades.

After sacrificing their youth to be public servants, they have been forgotten and discarded.

Sadly, many will have since died, with neither they nor their families ever being able to enjoy the prosperity they earned.

We are constantly reminded about the abject poverty experienced by most Eastern Cape residents, for whom the next meal and a bed to sleep on are uncertain, and yet it shouldn’t be so.

Almost 20,000 families could have been spared this fate.

But the GPAA says its futile amalgamation of pensioner records in 2000 was a demonstration of “a caring government whose intention was to correct any possible errors and bring relief to affected members or their descendants”.

Sentiments which betray that those responsible for this debacle not only know what they should have done, but are very well aware of who should have been the recipients of their so-called care.

When the government takes a quarter of a century to do nothing and still wants a pat on the back for its efforts, we start to question exactly who it is working for. When a lifetime of service doesn’t even earn you a thank you and support in your senior years, there’ sa serious problem.

Our government needs to stop disrespecting its own citizens by using them for all they are worth before dumping them like detritus to fend for themselves after they give their lives to it.

It is a harsh indictment on our country that we fail, time and time again, to support our own while trampling over their backs to stand on their shoulders.

If SA, and the Eastern Cape, are ever to prosper, we need to grow together and be there to support each other when we need it most.

After sacrificing their youth to be public servants, they have been forgotten and discarded