Organised Labour to embark on nationwide demo

Accra, Sept. 23, GNA - Members of organised labour are to embark on a nationwide demonstration on Wednesday to protest what they termed government's arbitrary decision to deduct workers' SSNIT contributions to fund the National Health Insurance Scheme.

The decision to go on the street followed the inability of labour leaders and government to resolve their differences over the issue of deductions of workers contributions at a meeting on Monday.

Mr Kwasi Adu-Amankwaah, Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), told a press conference on Tuesday that members of the TUC, the Civil servants Association, Judicial Service Staff Association of Ghana, Ghana National Association of Teachers and the Ghana Registered Nurses Association would go ahead with their action tomorrow to register their displeasure with government's appropriation of what rightly belongs to them without negotiations.

Mr Adu-Amankwaah said it was wrong for the President to give assent to the Bill last Friday before calling them to the negotiating table to deal with the problem.

"We believe that as contributors and beneficiaries of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust we should see the necessity for and agree, before government can appropriate any portion of our contributions for any other purpose than that stated in the Social Security Law 1991, PNDCL 247," he said.

Besides, he said, the current position of government to use workers contributions contrasts sharply with the party's manifesto in which it pledged not to use deductions from SSNIT to fund the Health Scheme. Mr Adu-Amankwaah said while organised labour was committed to the development of a national Health Insurance Scheme, it was clearly against government's intention to partly fund the scheme with a portion of workers' SSNIT contributions.

"The contributors we represent are rather interested in an improvement of the benefits we can secure directly from SSNIT," he said, and added that contributors would not mortgage their future for political expediency.

He said labour would work to transform various health schemes into health insurance in a manner that benefits its members and promotes equity in health delivery in the society as a whole.

Mr Adu-Amankwaah expressed the hope that the mass protest would make government change its mind and table an amendment to the law to ensure that workers contributions were not used to fund the scheme.

He, however, said labour would not rule out the use of legal options opened to it if government failed to heed their call.