Social protection is a right to all workers - APACSUN

The Africa Public and Civil Service Unions Network (APACSUN) said social protection is a basic right to all workers, which would enable them to cope with life’s risks.

The Network said a large proportion of workers in the informal sector in Africa were not covered under the social security system.

The problem was due to poor and limited benefits resulting from bad investments and poor management of funds by pension administrators.

A communique issued at the end of the Second Strategic meeting in Accra and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Tuesday, said there was some attempts at ensuring reforms for successful pension, which did not make adequate provisions for cross cutting issues.

It said the UN Agenda 2030 on “Sustainable Development” and the Africa Union Agenda 2063 on “the Africa We want” all underscored the absolute centrality of access to public services to all peoples.

It said deploring rigged economic model of corporate-driven globalisation had pursued a rapid privatisation experiment over the last three decades.

The Communique said governments in Africa continued to succumb to various variants of privatisation contracts that were complicated, legalistic and rigid, which led to higher cost of borrowing, among other things.

It said both Public and Civil servants constituted a substantial proportion of the formal workforce in most countries in Africa.

The Communique was signed by Mr Isaac Bampoe Addo, the Executive Secretary of the Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana. (CLOGSAG).

Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania participated in the meeting.