Workers Demand Action Now ...to Fix Economy

By Edmund Smith-Asante & Charles Andoh, ACCRA

THOUSANDS of workers took to the streets of Accra yesterday to protest the harsh economic conditions prevailing in the country.

From the Obra Spot at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle through the Kojo Thompson Road in Adabraka to Accra Polytechnic and finally ending at the Black Star Square, the workers, who were joined along the way by market women, students and drivers, chanted, danced and blew mini vuvuzelas, to show their anger at the current economic conditions.

Clad in red and black T-shirts with red armbands, they also wielded placards with inscriptions such as: “Why violate PNDC Law 160 with the Lonrho deal?”, “Where dey GYEEDA money?”, “Education is the key but Mahama spoil the padlock”, “High cost of port charges. No Export”, “When Stealing Becomes the Norm, Rebellion Becomes a Duty”, “Eh? Somalia’s Shilling Doing Better than Ghana’s Cedi?”, “Crisis or Challenges, Who Cares? There is no Money in Our Pockets” and “Corruption is the Enemy of Development and of Good Government”.

The charged demonstrators chanted songs like “Ye ni abre koo,” to express their anger.

The demonstration was largely peaceful and about 800 police personnel were deployed at various intersections along the route to prevent the demonstrators from straying.

An attempt by the police to get the demonstrators to converge on the Hearts of Oak Park behind the Centre for Arts and Culture, however, did not work and upon the demonstrators’ insistence, a road block mounted by the police was removed for the large crowd to proceed to the Black Star Square.

Why we protest

At the Black Star Square, the Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Kofi Asamoah, read and presented a petition on behalf of the leadership of Organised Labour and all the workers to the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, amidst chants, boos and horn-tooting by the workers.

The petition stated, “The protestations are necessary in order to draw the attention of the government to the dire economic and social conditions facing the majority of citizens and the need for urgent measures to alleviate the hardship.

“We acknowledge the effort of the government in addressing the deteriorating economic situation. However, the working people of Ghana continue to face increasing economic and social hardships.

“A significant number of citizens have been compelled by the prevailing difficulties to cut both welfare and necessity consumption, while businesses and industries suffocate. Times are very hard for the majority of citizens. And there is a limit to what citizens can endure.”

It also stated that the government had a constitutional duty to implement urgent and appropriate measures to arrest the economic decline and demanded eight actions that must be implemented.

These are: An immediate action to halt the depreciation of the cedi and rising cost of living; policy initiatives and measures to ensure the provision of critical infrastructure; the immediate downward review of the prices of petroleum products and effective policy measures to ensure that the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) operates  at full capacity.

Others are: The initiation of immediate measures to revamp the railway sector; immediate action by the government and the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) to address the challenges in the implementation of the new pensions scheme; a halt to attempts by the government to impose a pensions trust on public sector workers and effective measures to address widespread corruption.

Atuabo Lornho Port

Earlier in an interview with the Daily Graphic, the General Secretary of the Maritime and Dock Workers Union, Mr Daniel Owusu Koranteng, said workers in the maritime industry were feeling the negative effects of the government’s policy, especially the ‘dollarisation’ of the economy.

He also said workers were not happy with the issue of the Lornho Port, which Parliament ratified last week, because it violated Act 160, which stated that it was only the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) that could plan and operate a port.

“This shows that the Atuabo Lornho Port is becoming a port authority on its own and it undermines national security and our sovereignty because we all know that GPHA has the capacity to operate a terminal like that.

“So we are calling on the President not to give assent to the ratification of the commercial agreement for the Atuabo Port,” he said.

In another interview with the General Secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU), Reverend Solomon Kotei, he said the motivation for the demonstration stemmed from the seeming deaf ear that the government paid to the call of workers to take another look at how utility bills were calculated and other policies that were detrimental to them.

“If you calculate from January 2013 to date, we have increased fuel prices in this country by over 94.7 per cent,” he stated.

According to him, currently, the minimum wage was just about GH¢6  “and if the cedi to the dollar today is GH¢3.50, then obviously the minimum wage is less than $2, whilst we are expected by International Labour Organisation (ILO) standards,to earn not less than $10 per hour.”

He also said employers could no longer negotiate salaries with workers due to rising costs of production and cited the example of those who paid electricity bills that were GH¢4,000 now having to pay GH¢9,000.

Rev. Kotei insisted that the workers were just demonstrating and that if it were a strike, there would have been a complete shutdown of businesses, which they did not encourage because workers still had Ghana at heart.

International dimension

Mr Omo Budiago, a Nigerian who took part in the demonstration, said he and seven other colleagues from the Civil Society of Nigeria were in Ghana to show solidarity with the workers, who he said had been destabilised by the economic policies of the government.

“The government must listen to the people. The government must not determine the lives of the people, but the people must determine the lives of the government. So democracy for us is government for the people and by the people,” he said.

Asked if conditions were better in Nigeria, he said, “African leaders, I must say, are the same. They don’t have the interest of the people at heart. We don’t see Ghana in the struggle; we see Africa in this struggle.”

He however called for the participation of civil society, as they were in all sectors, and added, “Nkrumah got the freedom. We must return to the freedom of Nkrumah”.

Workers in institutions along the route, especially financial institutions, came out of their offices, waved and encouraged the demonstrators.

Media coverage was also very massive, with both local and foreign media trying to chronicle the largest workers’ demonstration to be held in recent times.

Writer’s email: Edmund.Asante@graphic.com.gh  

This was first published by the Daily Graphic on July 25, 2014