The Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC) has stated that it will oppose any attempt by the government to put limits on economic sectors that will negatively affect workers through a programme funded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"TUC will lead the working people of Ghana to reject any attempts to inflict burdens on workers and their families and the nation as a whole," stated Dr. Yaw Baah, the Congress' Secretary General.
He said that IMF-sponsored programmes and policies were utterly disconnected from reality and would only cause suffering for Ghanaians when speaking at a news conference on the subject of "Cost of Living Allowance (CoLA) and the National Economic Situation."
The Secretary-General stated that they were reminding the government that they had committed to four and seven percent pay rises, respectively, as part of the discussions for 2021 and 2022 base pay, under the condition that the government would not announce redundancies.
And the government will keep hiring young people for public sector jobs, he added.
According to Dr. Baah, they fought against the government seeking a bailout from the IMF 17 times since they had said that one of the key problems with managing the economy was corruption.
Others, according to him, included successive governments' inability to change the economic system so that Ghanaians could "create what we eat and consume what we make."
A 15% COLA for all employees on the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) was agreed upon by Organized Labour, led by the TUC, and will take effect on July 1, 2022.
According to Dr. Yaw Baah, the cost-of-living dilemma has not yet been resolved because inflation has reached 29.8% and there are no immediate signals that it will start to fall.
He said that young people were having difficulty finding employment that were commensurate with their levels of education and abilities since their education came at a high cost to their parents and the country.
"Despite the bleak national economic picture, we take pride in providing a lifeline to workers in need while averting a financial crisis,"
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