The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has said that trade unions in Africa must continue to oppose the privatisation of national assets across the continent and the refusal of foreign companies to pay tax to governments in the continent.
The congress also said that African economies have been and remain devastated due mainly to the gullible acceptance of neo-liberal policies dumped on them and the refusal by government to develop home grown policies that are capable of making the African continent the greatest in all spheres of human development.
Speaking at the 10th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the Trade Union Congress of Ghana in Accra, Ghana, President of the Congress, Comrade Ayuba Wabba, said the time has come when African countries, especially the African Union should revisit the alternative economic policies developed by the Economic Commission for Africa in the 80s.
Wabba, who said that the NLC has a long organisational relationship with the TUC Ghana, said such relationships “was intended to build a strong trade union network that is capable of confronting issues arising from global conspiracies against our various peoples by global institutions that insist they must drive our lives for their own selfish interests and purposes through policies and programmes that ensure jobs become outsourced fundamentally to increase profits and not to protect the interests of the worker.
“They also compel governments to stop spending on public institutions and services so they can be sold out to private individuals and multinationals to deny our people access to quality and affordable services as a result of high costs of the services.
“They control our governments to entrench bad governance; kill our industries, resulting in high rate of unemployment and export of our best professionals to help grow their economies and systems in Europe and America; and impose their products on us after incapacitating our infrastructures.
“These are all in the name and under the guise of globalisation and neo-liberal economics which the originating countries are already jettisoning.
“We as trade unions must be vigilant and ready to defend the rights of our people to good governance, access to quality education, health facilities, housing, electricity, jobs and functioning infrastructures developed and maintained with our taxes as public institutions and services.
“We must consistently oppose the privatisation of the collective assets and interests of our people, as well as export of taxes expropriated by foreign companies allowed to operate in our various countries without paying appropriate taxes to the state.
“Our economies have been devastated in all the countries in Africa, due mainly to the gullible acceptance of neo-liberal policies dumped on our governments who have refused to develop home grown policies that are capable of making this continent the greatest in all spheres of human development.
“As we achieved political independence, we are yet to strip ourselves of policy dependence. It is our duty as trade unions to mobilise our people to ensure we assist our governments to break the ice of underdevelopment.