GHANA EMPLOYMENT ASSOCIATION CASTS DOUBT ON SALARY INCREMENT

The Ghana Employers Association says it may not increase salaries of workers due to the current economic conditions.

The association says, it agrees to the meager earnings of workers, it argued that the cedi depreciation and the inflationary trends have created a revenue shortfall for business.

Chief executive officer of the Ghana employers association was addressing the media in Accra.

Currently, inflation has increased to more than 37 percent.

The cedis trading gains other foreign exchange has also depreciated to about 30 to 40 percent.

Workers have raised concerns about incomes which have been chiselled out due to the current conditions.

Most worrying is that the tripartite has also failed to conclude negotiations on the national daily minimum wage.

Despite these challenges, the Ghana employers association says, it may not increase salaries if the current economic conditions do not improve.

Chief Executive of GEA Alex Frimpong has charged workers to resort dialogue due to the current situation.

“The bottom-line is that,these are difficult time ,these are not normal times and we need to really dipping the culture of dialogue to reconcile our talks, to reconcile our differences, to reconcile our expectation and the steps that we need to take in going  forward,these are very very important times for us that we think that dialogue ,dialogue ,dialogue should be very very  important tool in advancing and studying shift of state”.

He also disputed the public perception that the labour unions have lost confident in the dialogue,because without dialogues challenges between government and labour unions can not be achieved and dialogue is the main platform to reconcile labour differences.

The association says it has engaged the president nana akufo Addo to address the concerns of both labour and employers and the assurance was  positive.

“The assurance is that we going to work together with government ,labour unions and other stakeholders to improve environment for doing business so that we can overcome these challenges”.

Already labour has raised red flags over the current conditions threatening strikes and withdrawal of services.

Due to agitations rearing its head, the Ghana employers association and the national labour commission have began training arbitrators and mediators to deal with disputes.

By Enock Baffoe/uniquenewgh.com

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