Kufuor assures workers of fair wages

Accra, Jan. 3, GNA - President John Agyekum on Thursday pledged Government's unwavering commitment towards ensuring a fair wages and salaries system that would enable Ghanaian workers to enjoy decent lives.

"We would never cheat or take the workforce for a ride," he said, when the outgoing Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Kwasi Adu-Amankwaah paid a courtesy call on him at the Castle, Osu.

Accompanied by the Executive Committee Members of the Union, Mr Adu-Amankwaa was there to officially inform President Kufuor of his new appointment as the General Secretary of the International Trades Union Confederation (ITUC), African Regional Organization, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

With this, he has relinquished his position at the TUC. President Kufuor said depending on how well the economy performed, the benefits would be rolled out for all.

The labour union must, therefore, continue to urge its members to be motivated into higher productivity.

He was emphatic that the Government within the past seven years had done well in terms of wages and salaries and gave the assurance that they would continue to work with labour to improve the situation of workers.

President Kufuor, who congratulated Mr Adu-Amankwaah on his international appointment, counselled him to use his position to influence various Governments and communities in Africa to work towards common principles of good governance.

Issues of democracy and the values of human rights he said, should engage his attention even as he sought to help to raise the conditions of workers at the regional level.

Mr Adu-Amankwaah, whose appointment is for four years, thanked President Kufuor for the high level of co-operation existing between the TUC and Government and said he had every reason to believe that this would continue.

He said he was assuming the new office at a time when there was much focus on regional integration and pledged to work with African Governments to negotiate for better trade deals on the Continent. He used the occasion to introduce Mr Kofi Asamoah, the Acting Secretary General of the TUC to President Kufuor.