The Trades Union Congress (TUC) of Ghana has relaunched its Workers Manifesto, to state its position on political and economic issues and guide its engagement with stakeholders.
The 48-page document is made up of seven sections, containing policy positions on human development, economy, labour market, energy and power, governance as well as climate change and environment.
Dr Anthony Yaw-Baah, Secretary General of TUC, relaunched the document at a General Council meeting, which is the second highest decision-making body of the union, on Thursday.
“This represents a vision we have for this country. We are not a political party, but we are very interested in what goes on in terms of the policies of this country,” he said.
He said the Worker’s Manifesto would be central to the engagement of the workers’ union with political parties and Civil Society Organisations (CSO).
According to the manifesto, the TUC under the theme of human and social development is demanding the Government to among other things focus on improving higher level education, grant subsidies to local farmers to improve food security and place priority on implementation of social housing programmes on a mass scale.
“We must improve the doctor-population ration by expanding the facilities for training of doctors and we must improve their conditions to stop them from leaving the country,” the document highlighted.
On the economic policy, TUC is urging the Government to include employment as a measure of macroeconomic stability.
It indicated that the current economic policy framework only focused on positive economic growth, single digit inflation, stable exchange rate and positive balance of payment.
“We need to change the macroeconomic policy framework. A change that does not only lead to faster economic growth but a change that creates decent jobs for the people of Ghana,” the TUC highlighted in the document.
On the labour front, the TUC called for “bold measures” to deal with low pay in both the public and private sectors, review the single spine pay policy, improve pension levels to reflect cost of living and make resources available to revive the process of establishing a National Unemployment Insurance Scheme (Scheme).
The Workers’ Manifesto was first launched in November this year when the TUC met with Mr John Dramani Mahama, the former President and Flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).
The manifesto has since been reviewed to include policy positions on Climate Change and Environment.
GNA
