Government reviews laws on industrial relations

Sunyani (Western Region) 11 Oct 1998 The Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare is reviewing old labour laws on industrial relations to create an enabling atmosphere for a vibrant management-workers relationship. The sector minister, Alhaji Muhammed Mumuni, said workers hold the key to the country's socio-economic growth and their understanding of government policies and participation in decision-making constitute an important ingredient to such growth.

Addressing the 17th biennial conference of the Ghana Commercial Bank Employees Union at Sunyani at the weekend, the minister said a draft national employment policy has been completed and would be made available to stakeholders, including the Trades Union Congress (TUC), for their comments. It would then be put into effect by the end of 1999.

He said for the bank to continue to exist in this era of privatisation, it must reformulate policies and strategies that would appeal to and attract the public to do business with it.

Alhaji Mumuni emphasised that ''as the nation's premier bank, the GCB may perhaps overhaul its revenue mobilisation programmes or introduce new measures of exploiting the potentials of the rural areas where there are no banks''.

The performance of the GCB for the first half of this year as against that of last year showed a massive decline with profit before tax reduced from 34.7 billion cedis to 21 billion cedis over the period. GRi.