Organised labour has refused President Mahama’s appeal to stay its 10-working-day ultimatum to the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC) and the government to cut utility tariffs by a third or face a nationwide strike.

Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Kofi Asamoah, told Joy News the decision to reject the plea was taken at a meeting attended by the various labour unions on Wednesday.

The meeting held at GNAT Hall was to appraise development on organised labour’s engagement on the “astronomical” increase in utility tariffs; payment of 2013 public sector pay arrears and the nomination of chairperson to the national tripartite committee.

The meeting also considered President Mahama’s appeal for withdrawal of the 10-day ultimatum, as well as invitation to organised labour to serve on a technical committee on utility tariffs.

The ‘controversial’ ultimatum, which some unions have kicked against, was issued on October 8, 2013.

According him, the president’s request came up “strongly” at the meeting but due to misinformation by a section of the media and attacks on labour by government apologists who have little or no idea about labour’s engagement with government, “the meeting agreed that the ultimatum should still hold”.

On Joy FM’s news analysis programme, Newsfile, Saturday, Communications Minister Dr. Omane Boamah stated that a 12-member technical committee working on utility tariffs has since been formed on the behest of the presidency with an economist Dr Joe Abbey as its convenor. He stated emphatically that Kofi Asamoah is the TUC representative on the committee.

But the TUC Secretary General has dismissed the claimed by Dr. Boamah. He said the committee held its first meeting today and coincidentally organised labour received a letter to be part of the committee the same day.

“One thing that came up was that people were not happy that an impression is being created by government machinery that a technical committee was already working on utility tariff increases, when in fact the letter purporting to formally constitute this technical committee was received formally today by organised labour: so organised labour agreed in principle to participate in the technical working group on utility tariffs.”

Kofi Asamoah stressed: “Indeed the meeting [by organised labour] did not agree to relax the ultimatum but asked its representatives to be on the technical committee so that as soon as possible we can find headway to reversing the high level utility tariffs.”

Organised labour, he pointed out, rather wants government to impress on the PURC to stay put of the implementation of the new tariffs whilst lasting solution is find to the problem by the technical committee.

This he believed would ensure an “equal playing field” for all parties to dialogue effectively.