We’ll See If IMF Will Allow Akufo-Addo Build National Cathedral – TUC Boss

Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Dr Anthony Yaw Baah has said the congress is waiting patiently to hear the views of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the ongoing National Cathedral project.

He indicated that the cathedral is being built during a difficult period when school children do not have enough food to eat in schools.

“If you make a cathedral priority of priorities, there is something wrong with it. We will see. If we are in these hard times and cathedrals would be built when children cannot get free meals, when our SHS students cannot get food to eat in Ghana.

“There is something wrong and you are building cathedral. So we will see if the IMF will allow this cathedral thing to to go on,” he said at a press conference in Accra on Monday July 18.

Dr Yaw Baah further rejected the decision by the government to go to the Fund because in his view, the Bretton Woods institution will not help tackle the fundamental issues facing the economy.

“Our main challenge with the management of the economy has to do with the corruption and failure on the part of successive governments to transform the structure of the economy of this country so that Ghanaians can produce what we eat and eat what we produce,” he said.

He added “Currently, the profit-making sectors, including mining, petroleum and banking, are all in the hands foreigners. I always ask my colleagues, why is it that Nigerian banks are all over the country but I cannot hear of any Ghanaian banks in Nigeria? IMF porgrammes will not deal with these fundamentals. IMF porgrammes, you know what they do?

“They only prepare the country for another IMF programme, that is why you go for one, two or three, four up to 18. So this 218th programme is going to prepare Ghana for 19th programme and the 19th one will prepare Ghana for the 20th. You know it is like that? so that IMF will be in business otherwise they have no business.

“We know very well that the 18th programme that is being negotiated will not be different but I want to assure you all Ghanaians that what will be different is that TUC will will lead the working people of Ghana to resist any attempts to impose hardships on workers and their families and the Ghanaian people because the IMF, the content of the programme will not be different but the resistance from the people of Ghana will make it different.”