Be wary of industrial actions — UCF urges Prez

The United Cadres’ Front of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has called on President John Dramani Mahama to be wary of industrial actions that go to test the sensibilities of any civilised society of the 21st Century.

A section of organised labour is currently on an indefinite strike, demanding their right to manage the pension scheme for civil and public servants.   

“As if the earlier strike action, led  by Kofi Asamoah and his Trades Union Congress, could not achieve its intended aims and objectives of toppling the Mahama administration, simply on the grounds of yet another flimsy excuse of non-payment of allowances, the UCF strongly believes and agrees with deep-thinking Ghanaians that such actions are carried out to serve the political interests of those who use their offices to put clogs in the wheel of progress of state,” the UCF stated.

In a statement signed by Mr Efanam Felix Nyaku, General Secretary of UCF, it said it was ridiculous, anti-state and inhuman to look into the faces of innocent students, vulnerable in-patients and out-patients of our hospitals and ordinary citizens to embark on industrial actions on issues that did not threaten the very lives of the organisers and their members but those that they served. 

Scrutinising the political landscape of the country, the UCF said the Kufuor administration, in 2003 and 2004, laid off thousands of workers within the Non-Formal Education Division of the Ministry of Education and the National Mobilisation Programme for no tangible reason because they were perceived to be NDC operatives. 

It said the magnanimity of the late Prof. Mills’s administration spared thousands of civil and public servants, who were known and were still known to be New Patriotic Party (NPP) sympathisers, with his father-for-all philosophy. 

“Such a policy has unfortunately become an albatross on His Excellency John Mahama’s administration since the callousness of these operatives has been used and continues to be used as a dagger to pursue the unholy agenda of making the country ungovernable,” the UCF stated.

With the political journey to the 2016 general election becoming muddier by the day, and with the conviction that striked were going to be clandestine weapons of the opposition, who would blame  the Mahama administration for embarking on a holy journey of flushing out all such unpatriotic elements? the UCF asked.

“Will it not be the same unashamed elements with their paid agents who will consider such an action as political witch-hunting? There is the urgent need to hunt and stop them from haunting the government. There is a saying across cultures that, once you hold the stick, you do not look on for a snake to bite you,”  the statement said.

According to the UCF, the happenings at the industrial front; the “dum-sor dum-sor” sabotage; the price hikes and currency flights; and some state institutions using their offices to subtly project the opposition in the name of ‘equalising’ or ‘offering a level playing field’ were all a precursor to the diabolical plans to unseat the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration, in 2016. 

The statement concluded by asking “Do we have to stand by and look on as they destroy the very foundations of our dear country just to satisfy their political whims and caprices?’’