President John Mahama
Last Friday, Ghanaian workers had another ritual of rhetoric as they listened yet again to promises of better days ahead from the President.
Powered by National Democratic Congress (NDC)-style settings and propaganda, it was uninspiring; rich in language but lacking in sincerity. It could not lift the spirits of the workers from the doldrums they find themselves in occasioned by the economic realities of the times. Morose workers, they rested their heads in tired hands, visibly spooked as they listened in Koforidua and elsewhere if they have enough credit on their meters to power their radio sets or televisions.
It was an opportunity for the propaganda weary workers to reflect upon their lot since the last May Day address by the President.
On a day set aside to recognise their toils, they can easily determine whether or not the promises of last year were implemented or not, and if these improved their present hand-to-mouth state of hopelessness.
Unfair wages continue to taunt them as members of the political class whose party is in power continue to live in offensive affluence, which it flaunts in uncaring hubris.
The period from last year’s May Day to the recent one has been chequered; full of policy hiccups and their attendant drawbacks.
The period has witnessed the scaling down of the quality of social interventions initiated under the previous political administration of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). The lives of the average Ghanaian worker has been impacted by the foregone.
With social interventions such as the Free Senior High School (SHS) now endangered, the future of the Ghanaian worker is bleak as they have to bear the unbearable cost of education of their wards on shoulders already fatigued and nearing breaking point.
Today, although we have continued to witness the dwindling of the inflation rate and the so-called resilience of the Cedi against the Dollar, we are nowhere near the sugar-coated promised Utopia.
Regardless of the flowery and well-crafted speech of the President, the contents like the one he delivered last year has little to gladden the hearts of Ghanaian workers.
In terms of health, things have not been encouraging in spite of a so-called Free Primary Healthcare initiative announced earlier. We would repeat our position that the diversion of funds which could have been otherwise used to enhance the quality of the National Health Insurance Scheme is a faux pas and a mere populist move.
Teachers had to take to the streets before a fraction of what is due them was announced by government, even as many of their yet-to-be engaged colleagues sit at home not knowing when they would be employed.
The Ghanaian worker is fed up with the bashing of the former government’s ‘non-performance’ over a year of the present’s being in charge.
Organised Labour has failed to live up to expectation by not doing enough to push for the betterment of workers in the country.
Under the previous government when the country witnessed better deals for workers and under unfavourable international economic shocks occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic, it piled up pressure upon government for enhanced performance. Not so today as lethargy is a description of a non-performing Organised Labour which has kept mute over a heightened state of illegal mining and a deteriorating lot of workers.