The penchant of government appointees or ministers to comment publicly on labour related matters and get directly involved in disputes with Unions are unhealthy and must cease, labour expert, Senyo Adjabeng has warned.
Instead of resolving the disputes, such interventions rather create problems for government and other stakeholders, he intimated.
Speaking to the ongoing tussle between workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and government over payment of severance pay, Mr Adjabeng advised the Minister of Energy, Mr Boakye Agyarko to refrain from making public pronouncements on the matter and allow the appropriate institutions to work.
“Our institutions must be allowed to work; it’s regrettable that more often than not the politicians will not allow them to work,” he stressed.
Mr Adjabeng explained that the Minister’s response to the workers assuring payment of severance packages to those who would resign was inaccurate.
“If you jump ship now, you are gone and you have no severance to claim because the process has not started and indeed you have not been written to so if you decide to leave you are not entitled to any payments,” he added.
According to him, “the president or minister is not a dispute resolution person; the minister has more to deal with in terms of policy than resolving disputes and so with all due respect he needs to desist from commenting on such matters and allow the PR structures at the ministry and the ECG to work,” he told this paper in an interview.”
Such interventions from the presidency or ministry truncate the process of dialogue between the parties involved, he maintained.
The labour consultant further noted that when ministers come into the public domain; they hold press conferences and make pronouncements on critical and dicey issues, it becomes problematic and they may be distracted from focusing on their work and rather go round trying to douse flames that they might have ignited.
Recalling how former President Dramani Mahama started commenting on energy issues and granting audience to unions when they were on strike, Mr Adjabeng was of the view that the former president’s interventions were unhelpful.
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