GEA SEEKS PARTNERSHIP WITH MEDIA (PAGE 31)

THE leadership of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA) has called on the media to partner the association to wage a national crusade for workers to increase productivity in the country.
The President of the association, Mr Charles A. Cofie, who made the call, said for the first time, employers and organised labour were joining forces to wage a crusade on the issue because of the common realisation that growth in productivity was the only lasting route to prosperity and, therefore, essential to poverty alleviation.
Mr Cofie, who was speaking at an encounter with the media in Accra, said the GEA was also engaging at the highest level to ensure the sustainability of the re-launch of the Productivity Week.
He said it could not be overstated that Ghana required a Productivity Movement that would be led by the government in close collaboration with employers and organised labour to champion a campaign on national productivity.
“We need the right management-worker attitudes to benchmark the productivity capacity to that of international productivity indicators,” Mr Cofie said.
He explained that this could lead to creating a better Ghana, raise the standard of living of all Ghanaians and achieve the US$1000 income per capita at the very minimum.
He said the GEA believed that its partnership with the media could make a significant impact towards improving the business environment that would engender wealth creation and employment opportunities and improve quality of life for Ghanaians.
He said the task before organised labour and employers centred on accelerated development of the economy to build a better Ghana that no longer recognised the need for “organised labour on one side and employers on the other side”.
Mr Ransford Tetteh, President of the Ghana Journalists Association, urged the leadership of GEA to make productivity part of its sustained activities and campaign, for the media to make it an issue of national importance.
Mr Tetteh said the formation of a Productivity Movement in the country, where every worker is an activist of productivity, would assist a great deal in instilling a culture of productivity in the workforce for wealth creation.