PSWU urges government to broaden tax net

Mr Richard Amparbeng, General Secretary of the Public Service Workers Union (PSWU) of the Ghana Trades Union Congress, has asked the government to broaden the tax net to generate more revenue for national development.

“If the government is able to expand the tax net it will go a long way to increase our internally generated revenue”, Mr Amparbeng told the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra.

Reacting to the President’s state of the nation’s address and the 2013 budget statement presented to Parliament, he said it was difficult to accept in the budget statement that government spent GH¢9 billion on workers’ salaries because from the point of view of the PSWU and looking at its members’ salary levels, it did not match the government’s high figure.

Mr Amparbeng called on the Finance Minister to make sure that people who were not supposed to be on government’s pay roll were eliminated.

The General Secretary noted that in the 2013 budget, Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) were woefully under resourced and urged the government to review that aspect.

He said given the meagre resources allocated to the MDAs in the budget, productivity would possibly be hampered.

He said MDAs had to be adequately resourced with the required tools and implements to make them more productive.

Mr Amparbeng called on government to ensure that subsidies were not generally reduced but  should be well targeted to provide some relief to the poor and vulnerable, saying it would be injurious to the economy if that path was chosen.

For example, he urged the government to desist from granting subsidies to communication, mining and other multi-national companies who at the end of the day made huge profits but did not plough them back into the economy.

He said government should rather channel such subsidies into pro-poor projects for the benefit of the masses.

Mr Amparbeng commended President John Dramani Mahama for the state of the nation’s address.

He said labour was patiently waiting to see the fulfillment of his promise to tackle the unemployment problem that had bedevilled the nation over the years.

He said he was enthused by the President’s statement that the energy crises would be resolved very soon, noting that energy was the lifeline of the nation’s industrial development and therefore should be given greater attention.

Source: GNA