Fair Wages Commission Is Useless � Karbo

A former National Youth Organiser of the New Patriotic Party, Anthony Abayifaa Karbo, has described the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) as one of the �most useless� state institutions in Ghana. Mr Karbo argues that the Commission has �woefully failed� to discharge its duty to negotiate salaries and allowances on behalf of government to ensure harmony in the labour front and should therefore be dissolved. Making his assertion in reaction to the strike action embarked upon by members of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) and Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) to demand unpaid allowances, Anthony Karbo � who failed in his bid to win the Lawra seat in the 2012 parliamentary elections said: �Every time labour goes on strike, doctors, teachers, nurses everybody, whenever they go on strike, they blame Fair Wages for not doing their job and disappointing them.� Anthony Karbo, who made the assertion on Monday March 18, 2013 on Adom FM�s Dwaso nsem morning show, demanded: �If Fair Wages and Salaries were doing their job why would senior government officials be intervening in labour disputes? If government is doing their job, then they (FWSC) should be dissolved.� Teachers in JHS and SHS nationwide have embarked on a strike to demand unpaid allowances after negotiations with the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission failed to resolve their differences at a number of meetings. The latest of such meetings took place at the Flagstaff House on Sunday March 17, 2013 chaired by the Chief of Staff, Prosper Kwaku Bani and which had the Finance Minister Seth Tekper as well as officials of Fair Wages Salaries Commission, GNAT and Tertiary Education Workers Union (TEWU) all attending, was deadlocked. The timing of the strike has been described as �unfortunate�, as the 2013 West African Examination Council for Senior High Schools has just begun. However a member of the NDC Communications team, Samuel George Nartey, dismissed Mr karbo�s call, pointing out that officials of the FWSC were mandated by government to negotiate on its behalf and if such negotiations stalled, it was only appropriate that senior officials ask for a briefing and strategise on the way forward.