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02.05.2015 Social News

Workers urged to support government to fix energy crisis

By GNA
Workers urged to support government to fix energy crisis
02.05.2015 LISTEN

Mr Eric Opoku
Kumasi, May 2, GNA - The Acting Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Eric Opoku, has urged workers to bear with and support the Government to solve the energy crisis.

He said said necessary and decisive steps were being taken to deal with the energy crisis currently being experienced in the country.

Though he admitted that the current power deficit was having a debilitating effect on production, productivity, investment and employment generally, this was not new nor peculiar to Ghana alone.

Mr Opoku was addressing this year's May Day rally of workers in the Ashanti Region at the Jubilee Park under the theme: 'Addressing the Energy Crisis; The Role of Organised Labour'.

He said the energy deficit had been the single most important factor that had affected the generality of workforce and the quality of life of Ghanaian workers, but said the problem dated back to the mid1980's and added that 'we did not have to give up or crumble'.

He said globally, nations that had depended on hydro power had faced similar problems due to the unreliability of the weather to feed the dams with enough rain water to generate power.

He said the Government had adopted strategies to bring the issue to a perpetual end and it was the responsibility of all to adopt conservative practices in energy usage.

Mr Opoku said he had always not been happy with citizens who greeted every venture with reproof saying; 'negativism has been the bane of our existence as a nation."

'We are capable of doing everything and, therefore, let us chart the path of possibilities and revisit the 'can-do-spirit' through which our forebears secured for us our political independence,' he said.

On labour issues, he pledged the Government readiness to dialogue with the leadership of labour unions to find lasting solutions to the matters that affected their conditions of service, specifically the Tier-Two Pension Scheme.

'Government is not oblivious of its responsibilities to improve the welfare of workers in all sectors of the economy, the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure is an ample testimony,' he said.

He, however, reminded workers that while they agitated for enhanced remuneration and good working conditions, they should not forget that it was the aggregate of individual efforts and output that created the national wealth needed for the collective sustenance, growth and development.

The hundreds of workers from the over 18 unions and other groups had earlier marched through the principal streets of the metropolis carrying placards some of which read: 'Bring back our Cola,' 'President Mahama do something,' 'Workers be workers and not partisan activists'.

In an address read for him, Mr Kofi Asamoah, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, asked the Government to take immediate and concrete steps to permanently resolve the energy crises.

While urging the Government to put in place immediate and practical measures to stop the cedi from further fall, he called for a reduction in the high interest rate to make borrowing attractive to sustain businesses and social development.

Some workers were honoured for their outstanding contributions.

GNA

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