General News of Friday, 13 March 2015
Source: citifmonline.com
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has reiterated its stance to resist any intervention from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that will worsen the plight of Ghanaian workers.
Government has reached an agreement with the IMF that will see the country receive about $940 million to help turn its ailing economy around.
There have been concerns that the conditionalities attached to the bailout will gravely affect Ghanaians.
Speaking to Citi FM in Accra, Secretary General of the TUC, Kofi Asamoah said they have made their conditions clear to government and will not relent on them.
He said: “We are opening our eyes to see, there are areas where it will be no go area. We’ve already told them, we will not accept, for instance, cuts in jobs in the public sector.”
“Even during the discussions of the national minimum wage, these are the reasons which led as to achieve the levels that we did on a clear condition that we will not allow job loss. So now we are being told that it is not a new thing, they are going to use our own home grown policies as it was developed at the Senchi consensus and provide the money.”
Mr Asamoah noted that “anytime IMF comes into your economy, there are several other factors including fiscal discipline which also brings about some challenges, but we’ve first warned that anything that will further deteriorate the working people of this country as a result of the IMF intervention we will resist that.”
Government requested the help of the IMF in 2014 for a possible bailout from its economic woes following high inflation rates, depreciation of the cedi, huge wage bill among others.
In early February 2015, government said it had concluded most of the outstanding issues concerning the negotiations with the IMF.
Government has stated that the bailout programme is to boost investor confidence in Ghana’s economy.