Gov’t told to look at condition of service for all workers

Poor condition of service in the country is a systemic issue that must be tackled immediately by the government, a private legal practitioner, Mr Kwame Jantuah has said.

In his view, this should be the focus of the government, not the payment of allowances such as neutrality allowance to members of the the Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) to enable them stay away from partisan politics.

Members of CLOGSAG began an indefinite strike on Thursday, April 21 over this development.

CLOGSAG said it was noted that payment of the Neutrality Allowance they demanded had not been effected as agreed in spite of official reminders and follow ups to the Ministry of Finance.

Reacting to this, Mr Jantuah said “There is a systemic problem that needs to be sorted out, conditions of service. That is what government should be looking at. CLOGSAG do not have conditions of service.

“Neutrality allowance is given to them so they don’t get into politics, what does the constitution say? The constitution indicates that if you are a public servant, you are not allowed to engage in partisan politics, it has been reinforced by the Supreme Court. So, if I work for the civil service and I want to go into politics, what do I do? This gentleman who was a police officer who is now in Parliament, did he not resign? So what are we talking about?

“If some of think that you want to charge e-levy and you won’t use it judiciously, these are some of the tings. How can you say that because you don’t want civil servant to go into politics, you are paying them compensations.

“The other thing CLOGSAG hasn’t been able to do for us which I pray they do, they say it is more than neutrality allowance, there are other things involved, they should give us the proposal or the list to go through to see whether that is right or that isn’t right.”