Deputy Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress, Joshua Ansah, has reiterated labour’s opposition to government’s proposition to include pension funds in the debt exchange programme.

He stated that during the first round of domestic debt exchange programme, the government and labour unions had signed a memorandum of understanding exempting the pension funds of labour unions from the exchange programme.

He noted that as far as labour unions are concerned, the terms of the MoU are still valid and must prevail in this reintroduction of the debt exchange programme targeting their pension funds.

According to Joshua Ansah, labour unions will remain unyielding in their opposition to the inclusion of their pension funds and have instead called on the government to implement the strategies labour suggested as an alternate solution to raising and saving money for the government.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, he said, “Labour Unions in Ghana know only one thing, and that thing is that there has been an MoU signed between us and the government represented by the Finance Ministry and the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations that pensions funds have been exempted from this exercise. That is all what we know.

“We will not do anything contrarily to the already existing MoU between us and the government represented by the Finance Ministry. Yes, we have signed an MoU and we said in that MoU that labour would assist government in finding the best way in also raising some funds in this very exercise.”

Speaking about labour’s suggestions to government, he said government has largely turned a deaf ear to their proposals.

“While we said that was that, we have a lot of suggestions we have made to the government. Anytime we make a suggestion to the government aside the pensions, it’s like that suggestion is a no-go area for the government. One we said that the size of the government is too big and government must try everything to reduce the size of government to make some savings over there.

“Two, we said that there are some expenditure that goes waste in this very country and government must check that one also. We said that government functionaries are not sacrificing enough. Always workers sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice, but we don’t see that from the government.

“We also said that if you’re able to collect taxes effectively in this very country, there’ll be no need for us to go to IMF for any bailout. It’s like we have not looked inside our own country and check what can we do to overcome these challenges. But because there’s something that is easy way to go like the workers’ pensions, I think government is focusing too much on the workers’ pensions,” he said.