President to speak at ILO centenary in Geneva

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo is to address the 108th International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland on June 10, 2019.

His participation in the conference is at the behest of the leadership of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

A statement issued by Mr Eugene Arhin, the Communications Director at the Presidency, and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, said the President would leave the country on Sunday, June 9, 2019 for the meeting.

The statement said the President would be accompanied by the Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, and the Employment and Labour Relations Ignatius Baffuor Awuah.

The Conference, which would also commemorate the centenary celebration of the founding of the ILO, is to be held on the theme “Building a future with decent work”.

President Akufo-Addo who will address the opening session of the Conference would set out Ghana’s contribution to the future of the world of work.

This year's session brings together over 5,000 delegates from around the globe to find solutions to the challenges of the future of the world of work, and celebrate the Centenary of the ILO.

The International Labour Conference is the ILO's highest decision-making body that meets annually, bring together the tripartite delegations from the Organisation’s 187 member States, and a number of observers from other international actors, to consider a series of topics placed on its agenda by the Governing Body of the ILO.

President Akufo-Addo, the statement said, would after the Geneva Conference embark on a five Carribean nation working visit from June 11, 2019, to June 16, 2019, as part of efforts at promoting the “Year of Return”.

He would lead the Ghanaian delegation, comprising the Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration Minister Shirley Ayorkor Botchway, and the Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Barbara Oteng Gyasi on the tour.

The countries to be visited by the President are; Guyana, St. Vincent and Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Jamaica.

The President had proclaimed 2019, as the "Year of Return” to Ghana, the 400th anniversary of the commencement of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, when the first 20 West African slaves landed in Jamestown, in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the commemoration.

The commemoration, the President Akufo-Addo said “is a statement of our determination that never again should the African peoples permit themselves to be subjected to such dehumanising conditions, sold into slavery, and have their freedoms curtailed in order to build up forcibly countries other their own, and create wealth for the peoples of unknown lands to which they were sent, wealth from whose enjoyment they were largely excluded.”

The events of the “Year of Return” are, above all, aimed at solidifying relations with descendants of Africa, resident in the Americas and the Caribbean, who have been defined as the Sixth Region of the Africa Union.

The President will return to Ghana on Monday, June 17, 2019.