NLC urged to seek review of Supreme Court's ruling on CEPS' unionization

Accra, Feb. 25, GNA - The Centre for Labour Rights for Development (CELARD), an NGO, on Wednesday urged the National Labour Commission (NLC) to apply to the Supreme Court for a review of the ruling that workers of Customs, Exercise and Preventive Service (CEPS) could not join a trade union.

In a statement signed by Mr Paul Nordor, Country Coordinator of CELARD, it noted that by its 3-2 majority decision, the Supreme Court had arrogated to itself the role of a legislature to make laws rather than interpreting them.

"By this decision, the Supreme Court failed to interpret whether CEPS, by virtue of its enabling law and the Security and Intelligence Agency Act 1996 (Act 526) is a security agency," it said. The Centre said the Supreme Court examined the issue from a very narrow perspective instead of adverting itself to global trends in the exercise of workers' rights to unionization. "The Supreme Court's position that the Commissioner of CEPS is a member of the National Security Council and that CEPS officers perform various functions as the Police does not turn the CEPS from its main function of revenue collection to security agency." The centre noted that, if the government had intended to make the CEPS a security agency rather than a revenue collection agency such as VAT Service and the IRS, all of which had one body, it could have done so without any restraints.

The Centre wondered where the ruling left CEPS workers since the ruling failed to give a specific legislation listing it as a security agency whose members still enjoyed retirement benefits such as the CAP 30.