Ghana Federation of Labour demands EPA between ECOWAS, EU
The Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL) has requested the Minister of Trade and Industry to furnish it with a copy of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) reached between the sub-region and the European Union.
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This is to enable the federation to study the agreement and appraise itself of developments.
The Secretary General of the federation, Mr Abraham Koomson, made this known to the Daily Graphic.
He said the federation was concerned about the protracted deliberations over the EPA and the indecision of ECOWAS in clearly making known its position.
Protracted discussions
Mr Koomson said since 2007, when the GFL, with the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC), deliberated and presented a common position on an extension of the negotiation deadline, which the EU was pushing for in December that year, little had been done by the country or ECOWAS to bring the issues to a close.
He said the GFL and the other unions were of the view that with the market access, negotiations under the EPA, sensitive sectors to the economies of African states such as the agricultural and industrial sectors, had to be excluded from the coverage of the tariff-removal schedule.
Unbeneficial
In addition, he said, unions raised grave concerns about the desirability or otherwise of negotiating and concluding such an agreement between the EU, the single most powerful trading bloc in the world, and West Africa, one of the weakest trading blocs.
“Our fear is that such an agreement will not serve the development interest of West Africa,” he quoted from one of the communications of unions during that time.
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Mr Koomson said a position paper by organised labour highlighted the fact, among other issues, that the signing of the EPA would result in an influx of a wide range of goods that would depress West African markets and undermine the agricultural and industrial sectors.
Time up
He said the time was now up for all to act in a concerted manner for a common position that would be beneficial to the country and the sub-region as a whole.
He said the minister was yet to respond to their communication for the revised ECOWAS EPA report to be given to the stakeholders.