The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has expressed serious concern about the scuffle between securitymen at the national headquarters of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and another group of securitymen on Monday.
It has, therefore, called on NPP to not allow what happened to recur since, according to the NDC, “that behaviour is not democratic and does not conform to the norms and labour rules.
On Monday, security personnel at the NPP headquarters clashed with their counterparts from Margos Security Company when the latter attempted to dislodge the former from their post, leading to the smashing of the main slide door to the reception which injured a visitor who had come to the party headquarters to transact business.
According to the NDC, the security personnel resisted mass dismissal because due process was not followed and in lieu of that payment should have been made to them.
Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, the General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Asiedu Nketia, said Ghana was globally acclaimed as a beacon of multiparty democracy, and as such any undemocratic action ought to be condemned.
Mr Nketia said the NDC, as a social democratic party, was always on the side of the downtrodden and low level workers.
He, therefore, called on the new executive of the NPP to protect the interest of the security personnel, whose appointment the party wanted to terminate, by giving them enough notice and in lieu of notice, payment should be made to the affected security personnel.
Mr Nketia said information reaching his office about the cause of the clashes was that the sacked security personnel were neither given any notice nor any payment made to them by the new executive.
He explained that a political party was not an ordinary organisation, since most of the workers were party members doing voluntary services and any action taken to dispense with their service ought to be handled with absolute caution so as to not dent the democratic credentials of the nation.
He said as a chairman of the Caucus of General Secretaries of Political Parties in the country, he was also obliged to condemn the action by some of the new executive as a wrongful move, since it was not wrong for workers of a political party to show allegiance to incumbents when it came to internal elections.
He said what the new executive should have done was to work with the old staff and win their trust since being loyal to an incumbent showed that the workers could be loyal to the newly elected executive, and the experience could be tapped for the well-being of the party.
He explained that the terrible thing that could happen to a newly elected executive of any organisation was not having the loyalty of its working force, and, therefore, advised the NPP new executive to work with the security personnel to see those who could work well and not wholesale dismissal as information circulating in the media tended to suggest.
Mr Asiedu Nketia said those were some of the pitfalls he learnt to avoid as the newly elected General Secretary of the NDC when factional heads were calling for heads to roll at the NDC headquarters when he assumed office some years back.
“I rather chose to focus on building a united party by bringing on board the factional heads and their supporters to work with the new executive of our party,’’ he advised.