[ 2021-03-19 ]

Government can’t take a unilateral decision on salaries for public workers
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has taken
objection to government’s decision not to
increase the wages of public workers for the next
3 years.

They say “Government alone can’t say we are
doing this or doing that without having to decide
with the other parties; labour and its
employers,” the Union stated.

According to the TUC Public Relations Officer on
Wednesday in an interview on JoyNews’ TopStory,
the power to decide on the wages of public
workers, be it an increase or decrease, does not
lie in the hands of the government alone.

Speaking to Evans Mensah, Mrs Naa Ayeley Ardayfio
bemoaned the undue pressure placed on workers to
compromise on their salaries and added that it is
the job of the Standing Joint Negotiation
Committee to decide on the wages of personnel in
the public sector and not the government.

She said: “You think it is the workers that have
to give? It is always the case that the workers
are at the tail of everything. And in any case, as
we are all tightening our belts, then the belt
must be tightened across board. There is a
Standing Joint Negotiation Committee and if that
perhaps is not working, we should go to the
tripartite.

“That is where the basic salary would be
decided. So you don’t expect one of the parties
– yes we are talking about the government
running the economy and all that but you are not
expecting that government – will unilaterally
take the decision that we are going to pay salary
or not,” she added.

Further to this, the President of the Graduate
Teachers Association of Ghana (NAGRAT), Angel
Carbonu also opined that it is unacceptable for
the government to take such a decision especially
when it has introduced new levies and taxes.



“That is highly unacceptable. Unacceptable
because for the government to say for the next
three years we should not expect anything
appreciable. Are all economic factors being held
constant?

“Are the prices of goods and services being held
constant? Are we not part of society when it comes
to increasing fuel cost which leads to increase
transportation, accommodation and so on and so
forth?” he stressed.

He further urged the government not to let workers
in the public sector pay for government’s
inefficiencies in revenue collection.

“If you are not collecting the revenue you are
supposed to collect, if you are not correcting the
loopholes that is in the revenue collection chain
and for that matter we don’t collect enough, you
don’t take it on Ghanaian workers.

“So please, the workers of this country cannot
be sacrificed on the altar of an economy that has
problems,” he concluded.

Meanwhile, the Technical Adviser at the Ministry
of Finance, Dr Samuel Nii Noi Ashong on Wednesday
also indicated that government does not have
enough money in its coffers to undertake wage
increment in the public sector.



“If you look at the Budget, Covid-19 is not
expected to abate until the end of 2023 and
we’re all looking to be tightening our belts for
a while and people should not be expecting huge
wage increases in the course of the next few
years. This is because we don’t have money to
pay for it,” he said.

Source - Joyfm

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