Editorial: Another Toothless Bulldog Workers Commission?

THE GOVERNMENT has set up a ‘high-powered team’ to establish long-term solutions to workers’ agitation for better conditions of service. To this end, a Wages and Salaries Commission is expected to be established by the team, says Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, Minister of Public Sector Reforms, who said the move for the setting up of such a Commission has become necessary in the wake of workers’ agitation for increased salaries and improved conditions of service.

Is the government serious about this new Commission or is it just one of those missiles being thrown as dust into the eyes of Ghanaian workers?

The Chronicle is asking this question because one wonders what government has done with the numerous reports of committees and commissions that this country set up over and over again to calm agitations of workers.

Sometimes we wonder how people in authority can throw money into the drain.

Workers agitation has been with us for a long time and once a while, this or that committee has been set up to see to the grievances of the workers and better their service conditions.

And the funniest things about the setting up of these committees and commissions are when workers are about to embark on industrial actions.

What this paper is asking is whether the proposed Nduom Committee is coming to uphold the test of time and be the saviour of workers of this country.

With a powerful team comprising the Ministers of Finance and Economic Planning, Public Sector Reforms, Manpower Development, Youth and Employment; and the Governor of Bank of Ghana; the Chief of Defence Staff and the Chief Adviser to the President, one hopes there is now going to be a light at the end of the tunnel for the Ghanaian worker.

It is gratifying to note that the team had been meeting regularly and had already drafted the guidelines for the scope of work for the proposed commission, which is supposed to have annual or periodic surveys on the changes on the market, to propose updates and provision of information that would assist the government in the drawing up of the budget, as well as the planning and management of the salaries and wages sector on the long-term basis so as to prevent the yearly agitation of workers.

Presently, civil servants and other sections of workers have served notices to government to advice themselves if certain demands made by them in terms of salary adjustments are not met. Most workers currently have the feeling that the National Labour Commission is a toothless bulldog and unless strike actions are embarked upon, government is insensitive to their plights.

So it is a bit strange for the Minister of Public Sector Reforms, Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom to debunk assertions that the only language government understands and responds to is a strike or industrial action, because this is the situation currently on the ground.

If, therefore, this is the mind of the Ghanaian worker, vis-à-vis government and strike, then Dr. Nduom’s Ministry should try not to repeat the problems that had been associated with salaries and wages administration because of the fact, as he pointed out, that the Ghana Universal Salary System (GUSS) was not allowed to work. He should make it to work.

This paper hopes government will abide by its determination to, in the short term, firmly give some interim enhancement, as well as clear the distortions in job placement and rankings between civil servants and other workers.