Capacity building for road transport workers

Accra, Feb 22, GNA - A four-day capacity building seminar for road transport workers to enable them to organize and render effective and efficient service to its members ended in Accra at the weekend. It was also to sharpen the participants' skills and update their knowledge on issues that border on social security, fair wages, drivers' rest period, insurance cover and retirement benefits.

The programme which was organized jointly by the International Transport workers' Federation (ITF), Finnish Solidarity Centre (SASK) and General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers' Union (GTPCWU), was to strengthen the Union's capacity to campaign on issues such as police harassment, vehicle overloading and the introduction of the single document system.

Addressing the seminar, Mr Emmanuel Amstrong Mensah, General Secretary of the GTPCWU, said the training was strongly related to problems long distance drivers face in discharging their duties, which included vehicle road worthiness, cross- border and undue delays, drug abuse, immoral and indiscipline along the corridors.

He said it was also to encourage road transport workers who operate beyond the frontiers of the West Africa Sub-Region to build the capacity to ensure that issues relating to long distance drivers are addressed. He expressed regret that due to the lack of coordination among transport workers in the country and in the Sub-Region, long distance drivers face challenging situations when they find themselves in member countries.

Mr Mensah expressed gratitude to ITF and SASK for organizing similar programmes in other West African countries to ensure that affiliates at the various levels would communicate effectively regarding networking and to be responsive to communication needs to offer quality services. He urged the participants to focus on the issues and digest them to make effective inputs which would serve as the basis for achieving the aims and objectives of the project serminar, and to develop the required documentation to have dialogue with other stakeholders, such as the Economic Community of West Africa States.

Mr Samuel Quarshie, National Chairman of the GTPCWU, called on the government to continue to improve upon the condition of existing road network and also appealed to the participants to go back and impact the knowledge they had acquired to the rank and file of their members. Participants urged the Union to continue to hold periodic educational programmes on HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.