The Statesman

The Statesman says the Trade Union Congress (TUC) is to meet today over the June 4 package

handed over to the people of Ghana in the form of a 15 % hike in the prices of petroleum products.







The paper in a lead story, says the surprise increases which have resulted in a 10 % rise in transport fares, have already been criticised by the NPP as illegal and unrealistic, while the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has described it as a ??time-bomb whose explosive effects will be too deadly to contain??.



The Statesman says barely a week after the dramatic and sharp increases in water tariffs, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), a government agency, in a move contradictory to the government?s public pronouncements about seeking the people?s welfare, announced the increases in total disregard for the economic plight of the ordinary Ghanaian.



According to the paper, the increases show yet another betrayal of trust on the part of the government which, in anticipation of the predicted steep rise in prices of crude oil before the 1991 Gulf War, promised to peg future local petroleum prices to international crude oil prices.



The Statesman says even though the period between 1991 and 1999 has witnessed a sharp decline in crude oil prices from the $45 per barrel to the current $15 a barrel in the same period there has been a deep increase ? more than 16-fold ? in the price of petrol in Ghana from 232.60 cedis per gallon in 1991, to the current 3,850 cedis.