Morgan Ayawine
The General Secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) Ghana, Morgan Ayawine, has urged workers to show high level dedication in their various workplaces.
According to Mr. Ayawine, seriousness, self-sacrifice and a dedicated approach to work would help bring about full economic recovery for the country, come 2023.
“As we take stock at the end of 2022, we should bear in mind that our work is the blood that gives us life, so we should not trifle with it,” he said in his Christmas message to ICU members.
The ICU General Secretary said year 2022, has been an eventful one with most of the events impacting negatively on the socio-economic expectations of workers.
“Just at the demise of COVID-19 for which we thought we were going to heave a sigh of relief from, the Russia-Ukraine war suddenly came, sending the whole world into an economic turmoil with Ghana being hit the hard way, due to our debt to GDP ratio deficiency,” Mr. Ayawine said.
He explained that the situation caused a free-fall in the value of the Ghanaian Cedi resulting in hyper-inflation with upward spiral in the prices of goods and services thus reducing the real values of incomes and reducing the purchasing power of the ordinary workers.
He, however, noted that although the Ghanaian Cedi seems to be finding its level against the major trading currencies now, the gains are yet to reflect in the prices of goods and services that sky-rocketed during the depreciation of the Cedi.
“The economic downturn, which miserably affected us, would recover completely and let us out of the economic woods, if Government would make its economic fundamentals right to bring total economic recovery and relief to the ordinary workers in Ghana,” he added.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri