Haruna Iddrisu addressing CLOGSAG officers in Accra yesterday
The Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) has rejected a truce called by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu, on behalf of the government, to call off their strike.
Members of the association, who have been on strike since last week, are saying that if the government, through the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC), does not include their inputs in the payment of premium to qualified personnel in the services, they would not return to work.
The minister, at a crunch meeting with the National Executive Committee (NEC) of CLOGSAG, impressed on the workers to return to work because “it is illegal to negotiate whilst on strike,” but the more the minister impressed on them the more agitated the workers became.
In fact, the meeting became chaotic as the workers demanded that the minister should withdraw a statement to the effect that CLOGSAG members were not going to be paid salaries if they did not return to work; but he did not comment on that issue.
The minister however, made it clear to them that the 2016 National Budget presented by the finance minister, did not ‘contemplate’ the payment of market premium for the workers and said the government was going to launch a new market premium for 2017.
“Give us one week truce for me to engage higher authorities and get back to you on your demands,” Mr Iddrisu said before adding that he was heading for Kumasi to attend a conference of the Trades Union Congress (TUC).
Immediately he left, Isaac Bampoe-Addo, Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, who was chairing the meeting, was asked if the association was going to accede to the demands by the minister. He replied, “NEC has made it clear that we are still on strike. Salary or no salary, we are on strike!”
At a news conference last week, CLOGSAG accused the government of refusing to include it in the process to determine the Interim Premium; and ordered its members to stay at home, if it (government) failed to respond to its demand by the assigned date.
“The national secretariat of CLOGSAG wishes to state that negotiations with government on Interim Premium have not been conclusive and because of that all our members are supposed to be on strike,” Mr Bampoe-Addo underscored.
According to the association, it sighted a draft report of the presentation of a sub-committee of the FWSC on the ‘Transition from Interim Market Premium to implementing Market Premium’ but they were not included, even though the committee had made some findings in relation to the association.
By William Yaw Owusu