The Employment and Labour Relations Minister, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, has announced a seven percent increment in the base pay of public sector workers for the year 2022.

Ignatius Baffour-Awuah said the four percent increment which was announced earlier in 2021, will be increased to 7 percent.

Speaking at the 90th-anniversary ceremony of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Kumasi, Ignatius Baffour Awuah said the increment will take immediate effect.

“In return, we had to negotiate with the leadership of Organized Labour, and in the process, we had to agree that we had to be modest in our request on the national kitty. The beautiful thing is that we are moving on, and we had agreed that coming into this current year, the four percent will no longer exist and that we are going to give workers seven percent which is an increment. It is my hope and belief that things begin to work better for the economy of our country, so we can give our workforce a better remuneration we can actually be proud of,” Mr. Awuah said.

In 2021, the Trade Union Congress (TUC) agreed on the base pay increments for public sector workers, as part of labour negotiations with the government.

However, after the agreement, some members of the labour unions expressed their disappointment at the percentage increase, saying it was too small.

A coalition made up of public sector workers thus protested in 2021 to express their anger and demand an upward review of public sector salaries.

They insisted that the four and seven per cent increment is woefully inadequate for their survival, considering the current economic hardship.

On Wednesday, August 18, 2021, a similar demonstration was held by the group in Accra to drum home their demands against the base pay increase.

The group lamented that the leadership of TUC, which is supposed to seek the interest of Ghanaian workers, had rather become a mouthpiece for the government.

They called for public sector salaries to be increased by 25% instead.