Hungry Youth in Afforestation workers to strike Monday

Beneficiaries of the Youth in Afforestation programme have threatened to embark on a sit-down strike from Monday, October 08, 2018 to register their displeasure over delays in payment of their accumulated allowances.

The beneficiaries numbering about 2000 have reportedly not been paid their allowances from May this year.

The spokesperson for the group, the Concerned Beneficiaries of the YEA, Saddique Abubakar said the action is the last resort they’ve considered to get government to listen to their plight after months of making incessant calls on the appropriate authorities for them to be paid their allowances.

“…What we’re saying is that at least the government should intervene for us to receive our allowances because right now we’re dying of hunger. Even the field assistants some even have to borrow money before they can even come to work…we’re dying of hunger; we need the money to at least settle some kind of debts we’ve even been borrowing. We’re embarking on our sit-down strike from Monday to Friday, if nothing comes then the following week we’ll go on demonstration…” he told Radio Ghana.

Salary arrears

The Corporate Affairs and Media Relations Manager of the FC, Mrs Joyce Ofori Kwafo, last month, however, denied reports suggesting that the beneficiaries had not been paid their allowances for about three months.

According to her, those beneficiaries who had not received their allowances produced false documents while others were on other government social intervention programmes.

“From my checks as late as Tuesday with the Finance Department, they had been paid for the months of April, May and June and so we have two months in arrears.We also discovered that there are about 292 cases of beneficiaries working in some other government institutions,” she said.