CLOGSAG demands sacking of CEO of Fair Wages and Salaries Commission

The Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) has expressed strong disapproval of the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission (FWSC) for transferring over 900 of its members to the salary structure of the Ghana TVET Services without prior consultation.

In response, CLOGSAG has issued a strike notice, set to take effect from September 25, 2024, if the migration exercise is not reversed immediately.

Isaac Bampoe Addo, the Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, shared these concerns in an exclusive interview with labour correspondent Daniel Opoku in Accra. He explained that in August 2024, the FWSC moved nine hundred members of CLOGSAG to the TVET Services’ salary structure, which is managed by the Ministry of Education and Ghana TVET Service.

However, the affected staff are unhappy, stating that this decision was made without their input and has negatively impacted their August salaries and promotions. CLOGSAG is demanding urgent action to address these grievances.

“This issue has affected almost all the members I spoke for in Government Technical Training Center. We are thirty in all. As I speak now, we have senior members who have been terribly affected with this issue.”

“Most of them who have been there for several years and ready to go on retirement have been taken back, their promotions have been reduced, and here lies the case now everything has been changing for them. The money is not even good for them, and you have reduced it”.

“We were not engaged before migrating, we want to be moved back to the Civil Service, that’s our stance”.

Already, tension is mounting that the FWSC has been silent on the matter.

Mr Isaac Bampoe Addo is worried the industrial front will be affected from next week.

“We have had interaction with the Fair Wages and Salaries Commission, the Ministry, even the TVET Services and we have asked them that per law, they should have been given options whether they would want or belong to the TVET Services or Civil Service, this was not done”.

“Somebody who has worked for 36 years and asking the person to join TVET Services,, the person was not employed as a teacher, you are asking the person to write licensure exams is unfair,” he stated.

He called on President Akufo-Addo to dismiss the Chief Executive Officer of the Commission, Mr Benjamin Arthur for peaceful industrial climate.

“The man at Fair Wages and Salaries Commission should be sacked. He is creating confusion in the system. He should be sacked by the President; this is not the time for such things to happen. This is the time we need industrial peace”

“In the first place, he did it without our consent and this is devious, so what is your intention? Are you trying to dismantle CLOGSAG which you can never do that’s why I am saying he is not in for industrial peace. He must be sacked from that place,” Mr Bampoe Addo demanded.