Involve union leaders in contract negotiations – TUC

The General Secretary of the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Dr Yaw Baah, Ghana, called on the government to involve the leaders of the trade union bodies in the negotiations and management of public agreements.

He said the Union body has experts who can work with the government to negotiate contracts on behalf of the country to ensure value for money.

Dr Baah made the call at a TUC seminar on “Negotiating and Managing Public Agreements in Ghana – The Role of Trade Unions”.

He said the country was endowed with natural resources but poor contract negotiations had affected his development fortunes.

“Ghana has been mining gold for 120 years, but foreigners are making a lot of money at the expense of the citizens. Road infrastructure is poor in most of these mining communities, associated with hunger and poverty, ”he said.

Dr Baah called on civil society organizations and other bodies to join the TUC in leading the process of building the government’s political will to involve key stakeholders in negotiating the agreements.

He cited the Volta River Authority deal in the 1960s, which was reviewed by Ghanaian experts like Professor George Akilakpa Sawyerr, an academic, which got a better deal for the country.

He expressed disappointment at the alleged parliamentary approval of certain contract documents without due diligence.

“It is worrying that some of these parliamentarians approve these contracts because they do not understand the technical details involved in the document while others do not have enough time to go through the voluminous documents,” he said. declared.

The Director of the Labor Research and Policy Institute, TUC-Ghana, Dr Kwabena Nyarko Otoo, who presented a “Research analysis on the negotiation and management of public agreements in Ghana”, noted that from 2011 to 2016, the country had experienced extended outages – “dumsor” – largely due to the problem of producing excess energy demand.

Generation, he noted, had since increased far beyond energy demand, with current projections being that no additional electricity generation would be required until 2027.

But the energy sector has faced monumental challenges such as unreliable electricity, rising debts, rising tariffs and low investment, Dr Otoo said, and called for capacity building for those appointed by the government during contract negotiations.