The General Agriculture Workers Union (GAWU) has called on government to set a quota system for local businesses to thrive in the cocoa sector.
According to GAWU, the quota system should include the provision of stimulus packages to support these local businesses in the sector.
General Secretary of GAWU, Edward Kareweh said this at a validation meeting organised by GAWU in Accra on July 9.
According to GAWU, its findings indicate that there are over 791, 000 farmers in the cocoa sector.
However, these farmers do not have access to welfare insurance packages and a pension system.
According to the findings, though Ghana accrued over 2 billion dollars in cocoa between 2018 to 2021, processing of the product for local consumption has become a major setback.
Of a major concern to GAWU is the role of multinationals in destroying the cocoa farms to the detriment of the Ghanaian economy.
Again, the lack of capacity by local businesses to compete with the multinational companies in the sector has become a problem.
Mr Edward Kareweh believes the quota system will help resolve the challenges in the cocoa industry.
“A quota system will be good to start with, but I think that we need to constantly upgrade it, the attitude of even our own government and government officials even when they are even looking for consultants, they don’t go in for local consultants they go in foreign consultants.”
“When they are looking for companies to construct roads which domestic companies are constructing our roads which domestic companies are holding a major part of the economy, even if you come to the banking industry through our own deliberate policies, we collapsed local banks and allowed foreign banks to flourish, we need to take it sector by sector and deliberately support local companies to grow,” he urged.
Former General Secretary of GAWU, Kingsley Offei Nkansah, suggested a conducive regulatory environment to support cocoa farmers in the country.
“Regarding the cocoa sector, we are interested not only in those in formal employment, but we are also interested in the 800,000 cocoa farmers who also are working people and should enjoy better conditions in terms of remuneration, occupational safety and health and social security, especially pension, maternity protection for the women,” he said.
Country Programme Director for Solidarity Center, an affiliate of the International Labour Organization, Deddeh Tulay spoke about plans to engage the government of Ghana for a better condition of service for the workers in the sector.
“Some employers paying workers below the minimum wage, some workers provided with plantation, some workers provided with housing without bathrooms and so the issues range from low wages, lack of safety protection so the Solidarity Center through the Union, is helping workers to advance their rights,” he said.
The theme for the meeting was “collective bargaining and organizing in transnationally owned cocoa sector.”
