Labour says private sector has failed the nation

Mr Richard Amparbeng, the Deputy General Secretary of the Public Services Workers Union (PSWU) of the Ghana Trades Union Congress, has said the private sector had failed in terms of job creation.

“For the past three decades, as a nation, we embarked on privatization of public sector organizations for our developmental agenda but I am sorry to state that this policy had not yielded much dividends”, he said.

He said Ghana was still grappling with unemployment and low productivity because the private sector had failed to employ and is primarily motivated by profit.

Mr Amparbeng was speaking at the Eastern Regional Delegates’ Conference of the PSWU on Thursday.

He said the PSWU would not oppose public sector reforms that would set targets because it was a must for the public sector to increase productivity.

He appealed to the government and development partners to consider resourcing the public sector to curb youth unemployment.

Mr Amparbeng said the union would lead the crusade for enhanced public sector productivity through awareness creation and trade union education.

He appealed to the government not to ratify the Economic Partnership Agreement being forced on it by the European Union, saying, “The agreement is not in favour of our national development since our domestic revenue especially, customs and exercise revenue will shrink.”

He appealed to government to extend the 20 percent base pay increase to organizations that had not migrated onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).