Accra, Nov. 28, GNA – The Ghana Mineworkers’ Union of Trade Union Congress, Ghana, has called on President Akufo-Addo to pass the revised Labour Bill into law before the end of January 7, 2025.
The Union said the government’s attention to the urgent need to review the Labour Act 2003 (Act 651) would comprehensively deal with the implementational gaps and challenges to meet the changing needs of actors in the industrial relations space.
Mr Abdul-Moomin Gbana, the General Secretary of the Union, said this at the Union’s National Executive Council meeting in Accra.
He said in the last 10 years, there had been a significant decline in decent work not just in the mining sector but the Ghanaian economy.
This situation, he stressed, was caused by a marked shift in the nature of employment away from standard or permanent employment to non-standard forms of employment, including temporary work, casualization, and fixed-term contract work.
He said the issue of employment was further occasioned by indiscriminate outsourcing and fragmentation of production and its effect on the Ghanaian workers.
As a result of the significant shift, he said workers now have lower levels of employment protection, high degrees of uncertainty, and face higher risks in respect of workplace accidents or injuries.
Touching on illicit financial flow, Mr Gbana said the Union would from 2025 embark on spirited campaigns aimed at clamping down on corruption in the sector.
The African Union estimates that 25 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product of African states, or some US$ 148 billion, is lost to corruption every year on the continent.
In Ghana, according to IMANI, Ghana loses more than US$3 billion to corruption every year.
Between 1960 and 2012, illicit financial flows through trade misinvoicing in Ghana totalled US$40 billion.
Illicit flows, he stated, were a significant source of domestic resource leakage that depleted foreign currency, lowered tax revenues, inhibited foreign investment, lowered government capital and social spending, and worsened poverty in developing nations.
Ahead of the general elections, Mr Gbana urged all to be agents of peace before, during, and after the election.
“The Union joins many other well-meaning Ghanaians and organisations in calling for free, fair, transparent, and violent-free elections in the 2024 electioneering process,” he said.
He called on the Electoral Commission to be professional and impartial, work within the mandate of the Constitution, and desist from all acts that would affect the credibility of the elections.
GNA