Nkrumaist parties draw govt's attention to the social sector

The Progressive Unity, comprising three Nkrumaist parties say they will campaign to reverse the state retreat from the social sector.

“We insist on the responsibility of the state to intervene systematically in equalising economic welfare for Ghanaians especially, the disadvantaged,” it said in a communiqu?. The leadership of the National Reform Party, (NRP) the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the People’s National Convention (PNC) signed it. The parties also vow to campaign for a redistribution of resources for example, excessive taxation of the poor.

“We will support factory floors campaigns for safe jobs and decent pay and against casualisation. We will march against gender-based. We will fight for more fair landlord and tenant arrangements. We will fight for government to spend our money on schools and teachers rather than presidential jets and luxury cars. We will fight for resources to enterprises that support local productivity and exports rather than import-based industries,” the communiqu? said.

The communiqu? further explained that national reconciliation cannot be achieved if terrible inequalities still persist in the Ghanaian society. “We cannot achieve national reconciliation and unity if so many people suffer economic and social injustices, it said.

It cited for example that the most important inequality is between what it termed “the powerful but unproductive and wasteful administrative elite that controls the state machinery on one hand and the poor masses of ordinary Ghanaians on the other.”

The communiqu? noted that the unequal access to social power for millions of Ghanaians has resulted in unemployment, poverty, poor health, homelessness, unbearable taxes and state brutality.

The three Nkrumaist parties have agreed to build a movement that would defeat the systems of inequality that deny, “Productive Ghanaians the fair rewards of their labour.” “Only by defeating injustice can we build genuine national unity and true national productivity,” the communiqu? said.