Organized labour calls for free and fair December polls

The Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) has appealed to all stakeholders in the 2012 general elections to ensure free, fair and transparent polls whose outcome would be accepted by the contesting political parties.

Mr Kofi Asamoah, the Secretary General, said organized labour would resist attempts by any group of people or individuals to subvert the democratic dispensation or cause confusion.

He was speaking at the fifth quadrennial delegates’ conference of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) of the GTUC, in Kumasi, on Friday.

The three-day meeting is under the theme “Organizing communication workers in the changing face of information and communication technology”.

Mr Asamoah said organized labour had pledged to remain non-partisan in the upcoming elections and would work to ensure that the poll was credible.

He expressed concern about the unrest and conflicts in some parts of the country and called on the government to adequately resource the security agencies to deal with the violence.

Mr Asamoah noted that the world had over the years seen rapid technological changes, which had brought significant challenges to members of the CWU.

There is therefore the need for the leadership of the union to device effective strategies and policy framework that would help them to deal with challenges associated with the fast changing communication and technology.

Mr James T. Lartey, General Secretary of CWU, said technological advances had brought in their wake redeployment and redundancies in the sector.

He called on the government to see to it that Information Communication Technology (ICT) companies complied with the country’s labour law by allowing their employees to join the labour union.

Mr Lartey also appealed to the government to revamp and provide more resources to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) to enable it to efficiently perform its job as the nation’s only wire service.

Source: GNA