Organised Labour, made up of labour unions and associations in the country, will proceed with its nationwide actions to express outrage with the “avalanche of insensitive increases in taxes, levies and utility prices”, Secretary-General of the TUC Kofi Asamoah announced on Friday.
This follows a series of meetings between Organised Labour and government that ended inconclusively last week, meant to find an amicable settlement to the increased levies.
Kofi Asamoah, who spoke on behalf of Organised Labour, said the actions are intended to get government to reduce the utility tariffs and withdraw the Energy sector Levies Act.
Rationalising their intended action, Mr. Asamoah said government raised public sector wages by 10 percent, and with inflation at near 17 percent there is an expected 7 percent decline in public sector earnings.
“We firmly believe that the levels of current increases are unbearable,” Asamoah reiterated.
However, Organised Labour says it is not in denial of the need for some increases in utility tariffs, but under the present economic conditions it is asking government to stagger the increases.
With the Energy sector levies, on the other hand, Organised Labour believes it is a desperate attempt by government to squeeze everything out of the average Ghanaian, as it claims the Act flies in the face of deregulating the downstream petroleum sector.
“By stampeding the fuel price cost-build up with all these levies and taxes, government is effectively denying Ghanaians the recent falls in crude prices and the seeming stability of the exchange rate.”
Asamoah deplored the situation of formal workers paying the majority of direct taxes used to run the country, yet there is no relief for them as they suffer punitive indirect taxes without commensurate increases in incomes.
He therefore declared January 20 for Organised Labour’s nationwide demonstrations to press home its demands. In December, the PURC and government announced increases in utility tariffs of 59.2 percent for electricity and 67.2 percent for water as Ghanaians prepared for the Yuletide, and again were met with increases in fuel prices emanating from the energy sector levies Act.
Mr. Asamoah said the Act was so badly written that he wonders how Parliament could pass such a law — which he described as open-ended, undefined and unspecified in several areas.
“It gives room for the perpetual collection of so-called Tema Oil Refinery Levies the country has paid since 2001.”
He observed that government continues to talk about Legacy debts which Ghanaians must pay, but it fails to disclose how these debts came about.