President Akufo-Addo to speak at Ilo centenary celebration

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will address the 108th International Labour Conference of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland.

He will lead the Ghanaian delegation, which will include the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Mrs Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, and the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Ignatius Baffuor Awuah.

A statement issued by the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Mr Eugene Fiifi Arhin, said the President would leave Ghana on Sunday, June 9, 2019.

It said the conference, which will also commemorate the centenary celebration of the founding of the ILO, was being held on the theme: “Building a future with decent work”.

It added that President Akufo-Addo would address the opening session of the conference on Monday, June 10, 2019, in which he would set out Ghana’s contribution to the future of the world of work.

The statement said this year's session would bring together over 5,000 delegates from around the globe to find solutions to the challenges of the future of the world of work and celebrate the centenary of the ILO.

The International Labour Conference is the ILO's highest decision-making body. It meets annually, bringing together the tripartite delegations from the organisation’s 187-member states and a number of observers from other international actors to consider a series of topics placed on its agenda by the Governing Body of the ILO.

Year of Return

The statement said President Akufo-Addo would, from June 11 to 16, 2019, embark on working visits to five Caribbean nations as part of efforts to promote the ‘Year of Return’.

It said he would lead the Ghanaian delegation, comprising the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, on the tour.

It said the countries to be visited by the President were Guyana, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica.

It said having proclaimed 2019 the ‘Year of Return’ to Ghana, the 400th anniversary of the commencement of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade when the first 20 West African slaves landed in Jamestown, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, its commemoration, according to President Akufo-Addo, “is a statement of our determination that never again should the African peoples permit themselves to be subjected to such dehumanising conditions, sold into slavery and have their freedoms curtailed in order to build up forcibly countries other than their own and create wealth for the peoples of unknown lands to which they were sent, wealth from whose enjoyment they were largely excluded”.

The events of the ‘Year of Return’ are, above all, aimed at solidifying relations with descendants of Africa resident in the Americas and the Caribbean, who have been defined as the Sixth Region of the African Union.

The President will return to Ghana on Monday, 17th June 2019.