The labour front seems to be divided as the Ghana Federation of labour (GFL) has opposed the Trade Union Congress (TUC) for threatening government with a massive nationwide strike if the utility tariff increment is not reversed.
TUC issued a 10-day ultimatum for government and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) to reduce utility tariffs or slash the 78.0% on Electricity and 50% on water to one-third; which will be spread in subsequent years.
According to the TUC, the increment is too high and above the pocket of the ordinary Ghanaian.
However, speaking in an interview on Citi eye witness news, Mr Abraham Koomson, General Secretary of the GFL described the threat as �opportunistic, hypocritical and populist�.
He does not understand why the TUC will issue such threats when they were present at the stakeholders meeting, were part of the board of PURC and were privy to some information.
He is of the view that if they (TUC) had any objections, they should have let their �presence be felt� and immediately disagreed with the increment.
�You were not just to there to witness but your presence must be felt�now that people are making noise; now that people are crying foul, then they come out and pretend as if they are also against it� What they are doing is a populace stands. We are all not too happy about these increases but they had the opportunity to be on the committee and to raise issues but they did not do that,� Mr Koomson opined.
Mr Koomson indicated that the GFL, TUC and other stakeholders had already agreed to analyse a draft statement before taking any action and so was surprised when he heard TUC has departed from that agreement and had issued an ultimatum.
According to him, �threatening will not solve the issue; even under the labour act, it is wrong for you to issue threats when negotiations are ongoing. You are to negotiate in good faith. They didn�t bring this thing to the attention of all of us�There are so many approaches; the one that they (TUC) have adopted is wrong�.
�Government cannot direct what the PURC should do. What government can do is to give subsidies otherwise, we would have to go back to the "dum so dum so" (days of darkness); if you want something; you don't go threatening�� he added.
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