Don’t turn ‘guns’ on yourselves — Kofi Asamoah urges unions
The Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Kofi Asamoah, has urged all workers’ unions not to “turn the guns on themselves” but rather direct their anger at the managers of the economy who he said have brought untold hardships to workers.
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“Please turn your ‘guns’ on decision makers, including internal and external forces, whose roles have created hardships for ordinary people, including working people in the country,” he advised union members.
Delivering the keynote address at the 10th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) of the TUC at Adiembra, a suburb of Kumasi, Mr Asamoah reiterated that all workers’ unions needed was a united front to fight their cause.
Agriculture
He said in spite of the declining role of agriculture in Ghana, it still remained the most important source of employment for the teeming populace, adding that farming had not only fed the entire nation but also fetched a sizeable proportion of the country’s foreign exchange.
Speaking on the theme: “Organising agricultural workers for decent work”, he charged the government to invest satisfactorily in the agricultural sector, which he noted was a strategic sector in the political economy of national development.
According to Mr Asamoah, the plea comes at a time when budgetary allocations to the Agriculture Ministry kept falling.
Again, he said, the imposition of a 12.5 per cent tax on rural farming at this time when the fortunes of agriculture were dipping was a fiscal policy mistake bound to adversely affect the sector.
GAWU
The outgoing General Secretary of GAWU, Mr Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah, in his welcome address, stressed that the decent work deficit in agriculture was making the sector no longer lucrative, hence the need for the government to create the enabling environment.
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He, however, assured players in the sector that GAWU would continue to question policies that affected workers in agriculture as far as agricultural production and productivity were concerned.