Accra, Oct. 25, GNA - Mr Andrew Asare Kwame Pianim, an Economic Consultant, on Wednesday said the recent tendency for people to take the law into their own hands as vigilantes of organized labour needed to be restrained if the path of national economic growth was to be maintained. He said one of Ghana's major attractions was the relative peace and social cohesion, and the tendency towards creating undisciplined workforce had to be nipped in the bud to accelerate the nation's development agenda.

Mr Pianim gave the suggestion at the opening of the 46th Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Employers' Association (GEA) in Accra. The theme for the Meeting was: "Labour Market Needs and Training Institutions: The Acquisition of Employable Skills." Mr Pianim said what was required to fuel the nation's development agenda was a trainable workforce that recognized itself as partner in development.

"The old adversarial relationship that existed between employers and workers and between owners (of businesses) is a thing of the past. "Now, just like on the World Cup arena, nations operate as partners in the economic arena in competition for improving the living standards of their citizens.'Team Ghana' should embrace all of us from the bolts and nuts level operators to academia and all levels of the national workforce."

Mr Pianim, who is also the Chairman of the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, said the nation needed a structured long-term workforce development strategy that should permeate all sectors of the nation and receive support at all levels. He emphasized sound basic education, mass literacy, higher education and science, technical and vocational and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education supported by the necessary physical infrastructure and the policy framework to stimulate and ensure that skills were available for achieving the development objective of the nation.

"At this time when Ghana is on a verge of a breakthrough for take-off unto accelerated growth, the time is opportune to consider how we can structure our training institutions to play the strategically vital role that they need to play if skills shortages especially at the technical and middle managerial levels are not to become a major constraint on our national push for accelerated and sustainable development," Mr Pianim said.

Dr Charles Mensa, out-going President of the GEA, said the Association welcomed the challenges the new Labour Act presented adding that it had the propensity to turn around the fortunes of businesses and the nation. He said the GEA had positioned itself with other resource persons to expose employers to the new way of negotiation for conditions of service.

The Association condemned any action by workers, Government and employers that were at variance with procedures of the new Labour Act. 25 Oct. 06