Dr Yaw Baah
General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Dr Yaw Baah, has stepped up a campaign to halt the privatisation of Volta River Authority (VRA) as he warns government not to go ahead with the plan.
According to him, the union’s dissatisfaction with VRA privatisation policy is at its peak and will not hesitate to join forces with workers of the state enterprise and other well-meaning Ghanaians to resist the move at all cost.
Speaking at the opening of the quadrennial delegates’ congress of VRA’s divisional union of Public Service Workers Union in Kumasi, the TUC boss accused successive governments of always hiding behind privatisation to sell state assets to their cronies and financiers at the expense of the ordinary people.
Dr Baah stated that about 300 state-owned entities had been given out to private individuals, companies and groups under questionable dealings after lying about the economic viability of such enterprises in the name of divestiture.
He warned that multiple actions are a likely result of the union’s planned opposition to the privatisation of VRA, if government fails to give a listening ear to the concerns.
The congress, which was held under the theme ‘Current Power Sector Restructuring, Its Effects & The Role of The Union’, was to review activities of the union and plan for the next four years the election of new divisional executives.
Dr Yaw Baah continued that the current state of VRA shows that the state enterprise is efficient, discharging its mandate of power generation and supply equitably contrary to naysayers.
He added that the TUC, in collaboration with the Senior Staff Association of VRA, had submitted its position to President Akufo-Addo and explained why the VRA should not be privatised.
For him, going ahead will inevitably spell doom for the power sector with it attending repercussion on the citizenry, as it would be in the hands people with profit motive.
From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi