The labour agitation that rocked Ghana in 2013 may well deteriorate in 2014, if the posturing by government and labour unions is anything to go by.

Government is proposing a freeze in salary increases next year for public sector workers due to severe financial drought that has hit the country but labour is in no mood to accept any such proposal.

Finance Minister, Mr. Seth Terkper told Joy News' Evans Mensah the Single Spine Salary Structure has become too costly to implement and there is the need to restructure it.

According to him, the government has already paid close to between 3.5-4 billion cedis more than what it should have paid under the SSSS and that is unacceptable.

He said even though the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) raked in so much revenue, a chunk of it went into public sector wages with other sectors gasping for survival.

"GRA brings in so much revenue for wages and other purposes and you would agree with me that every single report presented to Parliament pointed to releases not being made for essential goods and services.

"[Payments to the] military, the state of hospitals, statutory funds and all that [were defaulted].

"All these come from one envelope-GRA resources. You cannot borrow to pay wages.

"Every single public institution that is on the budget had an over run on wages", he stated.

He said the sad state of the country's finances informed the theme for the 2014 budget, which is rebalancing budget to be able to judiciously spend on wages, goods and services and capital infrastructure.

He said the SSSS has undoubtedly become "costly" to implement and "like a household or a business, when one aspect of the expenditure becomes costly you sit around the table and consider it."

As part of that consideration, the minister said salary increases for public sector workers is likely to be frozen in the 2014 financial year but due consultations will be done.

But Labour is asking government to abort that proposal even before it is birthed.

The Secretary General of the TUC, Kofi Asamoah served notice workers would not yield to such a proposal in the face of rising cost of living.

TUC boss and President John Mahama

In support of the views expressed by the TUC Boss, the General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Frank Serebour told Joy News' Evans Mensah if government can guarantee that in 2014, there will be no increases in utilities, no hikes in food prices then may be its proposal would be accepted by labour.

But with the PURC serving notice, it would increase utilities in January 2014, Dr. Serebour said government must revise its notes.

He said government cannot use SSSS as the basis to execute such an unfriendly policy.

He wondered how government could so soon describe the SSSS as an albatross on its neck, when it rode on it to win election 2012.

He said a freeze in salary increases would only worsen the plight of the average worker, who would then explore other options, some of which may be corrupt, in order to survive.

Dr. Serebour said government must rather "widen the tax net" and "curtail the waste in the system" instead of seeking to freeze salary increases.

He therefore cautioned that any such policy will be rejected.