Regional News of Monday, 30 April 2012

Source: GNA

Socialist Forum extends solidarity to all workers

The Socialist Forum of Ghana on Monday extended its solidarity to workers and their allies throughout the world on the international workers day of May 1.

A statement issued in Accra and signed by Mr Kyeretwie Opoku, said since the Central Intelligence Agency overthrew Nkrumah’s socialist government in 1966, the material condition of the Ghanaian worker has steadily declined.

It said since 1966 governments have introduced successive World Bank/ International Monetary Fund programmes designed to strengthen foreign corporate control over Ghanaian labour and national resources.

It said workers had been called to sacrifice in order to attract the “investors” who it was claimed would create a better future for all and after 45 years, an instance of the fruits of such sacrifice by workers are the ravaged and decayed conditions of Tema, a carefully planned industrial city.

The statement said the situation of Ghana’s working class is not unique, and that the working class confronts deteriorating working conditions, unsafe working environment, and unemployment, privatization of essential services and the erosion of basic democratic rights.

It said the crisis within capitalism which erupted in 2008 poses a stark danger to the survival of human civilization, and the reckless aggression of the western imperialism seeking to seize the energy resources of third world countries and the ward of challenges from more productive capitalist blocks could push the world into disastrous nuclear war.

The statement said there was an equal danger that the wasteful consumption that capitalism encourages, leading to the reckless burning of hydrocarbons could undermine the climatic conditions for the survival of human species.

It said May Day 2012 witnesses a global resurgence of conscious working class struggles that transcends trade unionism and seeks the socialist’s transformation of the society.

The statement said imperialism remains a powerful, organized, strategic and vicious enemy which is more desperate and dangerous than ever, and that victory will require discipline, study, organization and even more sacrifice.**