We expected more; 10% is too small—Gyampo on base pay increase

Prof Ransford Gyampo is of the view that the 10% increment in base salary by the current government is small.

He says he is aware labour is not happy but had to compromise because of the times the country finds itself in.

Gyampo who was speaking on Accra-based TV3, says they were expecting more because they had a 23% and 25% increase by the previous government.

“Clearly, this [10% increment] is not good enough, it is small. The last we had 23 per cent, then increased to 25. I was expecting something more but if times are difficult and this gets explained properly to labour, and the president himself coming there, then what will you do?”

“I know that my people are not too happy but I know they were magnanimous in accepting because of the president appearing before the negotiation team,” he added.

Meanwhile, while addressing organized labour, the president of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama, pleaded with them to accept the 10% as he works to fix the economy.

“One thing that is a cardinal principle for us is to tell the truth at all times, we all knew that the economy was in crisis but some of the things I am discovering myself, have been a criminal handling of our economy, Ghana is a crime scene because how a government can be so reckless I can’t understand it.

“But we are faced with a reality, our options are very few, we can behave like the ostriches and hide our heads in the sand and let the economy crash but then what effect will it have on Ghanaian households and everybody? So I have told the Finance Minister to cut expenditure as much as he likes, even we ourselves in government machinery, cut as much of our budget as you like because we all must make those sacrifices. A certain distrust for the political class has arisen because it is like when everybody else is tightening their belt, the political class is loosening itself. I want to assure you that we are all going to tighten our belts. and there will be no wasteful expenditure.”

He added “I will just appeal to you that let us tamper our demands for this year, once we get out of the woods, we have set targets to bring inflation down, and we have set targets to grow the economy to make things better, when the cake is big and is big ger we will share it bigger.

“We are proposing an independent emoluments committee that will set the incomes for everybody from the president to ordinary labourer.”