Abandon IMF programme, Ghanaians hurting – TUC Sec. Gen

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has urged government to abandon the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme, few months to the completion of the programme. According to the union, government can resort to its home-grown policies touted years back, which in their view is a better alternative.

The TUC argues that the IMF programme, has rather brought unprecedented hardship on Ghanaians especially public sector workers hence must be abandoned. 

Secretary General of the TUC, Kofi Asamoah, who made the appeal at the union’s 10th quadrennial delegates’ congress in Kumasi in the Ashanti Region, insisted that the IMF programme has failed to yield the needed results. “These policies are not working; Ghanaians are getting poorer every day under the IMF programme. We urge you and your government to abandon the IMF programme and revert to the home grown ones. IMF programmes have not worked anywhere and they will not work here,” he added.

On salary concerns, Mr. Asamoah said the single spine pay policy though laudable, has failed to live up to expectation. “The implementation of a single spine pay policy brought some relief to public sector workers in terms of salary increases between 2010 and 2012. Since 2013 however, public sector workers have been experiencing a decline in real value of their pay because the rate of increase of the base pay on the single spine salary structure has consistently left behind inflation.”

“We appreciate the economic challenges in the last few years but we can no longer accept a situation where public sector workers at the bottom of the salary scale are being driven into poverty because of the IMF programme. There is a limit to what ordinary workers can endure,” he added. Meanwhile, President Mahama, who also addressed the gathering said government won’t seek assistance from the IMF again when the current deal expires. 

“I wish to reiterate my earlier statement that this is the ultimate IMF programme. This is the IMF programme to end all IMF programmes. Working together, we have implemented the bulk of the institutional reforms that are required under this programme, the final one being the new Bank of Ghana amendment Act which was recently passed by Parliament.” “The Bank of Ghana amendment Act seeks to strengthen the autonomy of the central bank to implement monetary policy more effectively by reinforcing the independence of the board and the monetary policy committee and putting clear limits on central bank’s financing of government’s budgets,” Mr. Mahama added reports citifmonline.com.