Workers get platform for complaints on wage compliance
An innovative online system which will enable workers to lodge complaints on minimum wage compliance at their workplaces was launched in Accra Tuesday.
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Under the system, a complainant would be required to visit Mywage.org/Ghana and Africapay.org/Ghana fill a form online, submit it to the National Labour Commission (NLC), the Labour Department or the Trades Union Congress (TUC), whose addresses have been provided, for onward submission.
After perusal, all similar complaints will be compiled for the necessary legal intervention to remedy the substantiated wrongs.
The new initiative has been made possible by the Wage Indicator Foundation of The Netherlands, TUC, Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL), NLC and Labour Department.
Ghana’s minimum wage problem
There are more than 40 per cent of workers, particularly those in the informal sector, who earn below the national minimum wage.
Employees are also made to work excessively for long hours without overtime allowance.
The objective of the online system is to make the processes of complaints a lot easier.
It is also to help alleviate the plight of working individuals whose employers are in defiance of the law.
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The form which one is required to fill, focuses on the two most pressing problems working people face — the non-payment of the minimum wage and working for long hours.
The launch
At the launch, a representative of the TUC, Togbe Adom Drayi, said the system would help address the problems of workers who do not receive wages commensurate with their output.
He lauded the system, and urged all workers who had any of the problems listed to utilise it.
The Wage Indicator Project Manager (WIPM) of the GEA, Mr Charles Asante-Bimpong, said records available to the association pointed to the fact that its members paid their workers above the daily minimum wage.
However, the GEA was aware that there were some medium and small-scale industries which paid below the minimum wage.
The introduction of the new system, he said, was, therefore, in the right direction and would help check the abuse of workers’ rights.
Mr Asante-Bimpong urged all labour-related organisations to support the new system to make it successful.
The WIPM of the GFL, Mr Ebenezer Aidoo, described the system as the use of modern techniques to resolve labour disputes.
“If we are able to sit in our offices and access information and lodge complaints online, it will go a long way to assist us to address the challenges we face,” he said.