Accra, July 15, GNA – Workers of the Electoral Commission (EC) on Thursday suspended the industrial action they embarked upon last Monday to demand improved working conditions until August 1. The suspension followed the intervention of the Minister of Manpower Development and Employment, Mr Yaw Barimah, who said their demand for placement on the Ghana Universal Salary Structure (GUSS) would be done by August 1.
The workers said their strike action was necessitated by the failure of the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment, the Central Management Board and the Appellate Body set up by the Ministry to examine the PriceWaterhouseCoopers recommendations to expeditiously address their proposal for inclusion on the GUSS scale.
Angry workers of the Electoral Commission on Monday locked up all entrances to the premises in a strike action to back their demand for a 100 per cent salary increase.
The workers wearing red dresses and red bands sang war songs as they demonstrated their anger and frustration at their poor salaries and conditions of service.
The EC Staff had protested against the Appellate Body’s reaction to a complaint submitted to the Minister of Manpower Development and Employment in 2003.
They said the Appellate Body’s interim report was a distortion of facts.
The letter, a copy of which the Ghana News Agency obtained on Thursday, said the classification of the PricewaterhouseCoopers did not correlate with the current structure of staff establishment. They said the Ministry of Manpower Development and Employment also failed to recognise the Commission as extra-ministerial in terms of its operational activities and size of budget, but classified it as a department.
The EC requested that the distortion by the Appellate Body of the PricewaterhouseCoopers classification should be corrected immediately to enable the Commission to use the GUSS scale to pay its workers.
Source: GhanaWeb
