The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Employers Association, Mr Alex Frimpong has said that the current economic situation in Ghana is bringing a lot of fear and uncertainties to both workers and employers.
This, in his view, is causing turbulence in the labour front regarding incomes.
He cast doubt on the ability of employers to increase wages due to the prevailing circumstances that are negatively affecting businesses.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with TV3’s Daniel Opoku on Thursday October 27 after a meeting the employers held with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that the government has assured to work with them to resolve the current economic situation
“So that ,might have been the main reason why we are experiencing some threats of turbulence within the labour front. The assurance is that we are going to work with government and labour and other stakeholders to improve the environment for doing businesses so that we will overcome this challenge. The assurance was quite positive, quite encouraging and quite reassuring,” he said.
He added “Currently, the stakeholders are working together to put together our thoughts, so that will feed into the wider conversation with the IMF.
“So I am sure, in the coming weeks, we will be apprised of the conclusions and if there are any further discussions we should be able to do that but [the President] made a significant point that as stakeholders we should not wait for crisis to happen before we meet, it should be something that we must be doing regularly to make sure that we are able to overcome our challenges even before they rear their ugly faces on the economy.
“I cannot say that for now we are still within the year, the partners work 24/7 so you can be sure that whatever happens we will let the public know.”
When asked about what business owners are doing to increase the meagre salaries of workers, he said “Without businesses the meagre salaries you claim workers are earning cant be sustained because it is the business that that will pay that will so-called meagre salaries you are talking about.
“So we need to make sure that businesses are able to work together with employees, let us sustain the business, let us look at how we can also meet the employees their demands at least up to the survival threshold or beyond then we move on.
“I can assure you that if businesses don’t survive the meagre salaries you are talking about about is going to deepen the woes of everybody. So at this time we need to apportion blame, we need the collective input of everybody to make sure that our labour market environment improves so threat employees and employers can all survive together.”