Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at the Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Dr. Kojo Pumpuni Asante has disagreed with the Defence Minister’s claim that recent labour agitations are a threat to national stability.

According to Dominic Nitiwul, the agitations coming at a time when the country is in a dire economic situation could lead to an insurrection as was seen in some North African states during the Arab Spring.

He has thus called on the labour unions to exercise patience while the government negotiates with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout to sort them out.

Reacting to the Minister’s statement, Dr. Pumpuni Asante stated that the agitations should rather be seen as an opportunity for inclusivity rather than a threat to national security.

He said, the government’s attitude to simply imposing new policies on citizens without engaging labour unions and other stakeholders have failed in the past and would rather be the cause of an insurrection in this era of economic hardship should a similar action be taken.

Instead, he said, government should take the opportunity to engage and include all labour unions and Civil Society Organisations as it negotiates with the IMF for a consensus to be reached.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday, he said, “I completely disagree. Actually, this is the best time to do it because we’re not some mindless task outside who don’t have the interest of our country at heart. Actually, we’re committed patrons, we want to make sure that, you know when this IMF is gone, we’re not back to the challenges.

“If we go and take IMF money and we’re not ensuring that we’re doing surcharges, we’re not ensuring that we’re accounting for Covid funds; we’re not ensuring that we’re transparent, we’ll have the same problems and we’ll go back to the IMF. So it is in our interest, it is in government’s interest also to be inclusive in the decisions that it is taking. We are all in it.”

He added, “This IMF problem and the challenges we’re going to be facing in the next couple of years, it is going to affect all of us so it’s not some government, somebody sitting somewhere making a decision for themselves that is going to benefit us.

“So I think that from a security perspective - and actually we want to even help in terms of the security perspective because we feel that creating spaces like this for citizens to engage and discuss, how do we move forward together is a better security measure than marginalizing people, having your way, imposing things on people, that is what is going to create instability.”

“So I would encourage government to engage all these groups, create the opportunity for us to discuss so that we can work together to secure Ghana and make sure that we have the culture of accountability institutionalized,” he advised.