Nunoo Mensah to workers: You can leave Ghana if you not happy

Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (rtd)

The National Security Advisor, Brigadier-General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah (rtd) last Saturday took Ghanaian workers to the cleaners for demanding what he considers ‘too much’, asking them to leave the country if they are not happy with their current situation.

In the face of the ongoing strike by members of the Civil and Local Government Service Workers Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) who are at loggerheads with the Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Antwi Boasiako Sekyere, Gen Nunoo-Mensah virtually told them to go to hell if they were unsatisfied with their current pay slips under the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS).

CLOGSAG has been on strike for one week, with other labour unions also warming up for a showdown with the government over their conditions of service.

In a speech bereft of diplomacy, which President John Mahama had to be saddled with the responsibility of explaining, the National Security chief told the Ghanaian public workers including doctors and teachers that if they could not cope with the temperature in the kitchen, they should pick their passports and leave the country since after all, Ghana, according to him, was not a police state and everybody could emigrate without hindrance.

“If you don’t want the job, Ghana is not a police state; take your passports and get out of this country and don’t destroy the country for us. If you can’t sacrifice like what some of us have done, then get out. If the kitchen is too hot for you, get out,’’ he said.

He was speaking on Saturday during the commissioning of a nine-unit classroom for the O’reilly Senior High School, funds for whose construction he was said to have personally provided.

The retired Brigadier was on overdrive mode, especially when he asked that salaries of the striking workers be suspended immediately, prompting his audience and others who heard him on the airwaves afterwards to wonder whether his speech mirrored government’s position.

“Every tom, dick and harry gets up and is calling for a strike. If you don’t want the job, get out of this country,” he told the Ghanaian labour front.

The recurring strikes, according to him, were symptomatic of the high level of indiscipline that had afflicted the country which for him demanded government action to stem.

Doctors who are not part of the ongoing strike action were not spared the acerbic remarks of the National Security advisor when he said, “When our doctors and teachers call strike every day and issue ultimatum to government, then something is going wrong; we can’t allow that to happen”.

He said after allowing people to die, doctors would still get their salaries.

Those who could not sacrifice by supporting the development process should leave the country, he emphasized, adding that unless Ghanaians learnt to sacrifice for the nation, Ghana as he put it “will never develop”.

He recalled how he had often walked from morning till evening, sometimes taking only orange juice, as a sacrifice towards the construction of the school, and frowned upon how in the face of such efforts “some teachers say that they won’t teach them (students) because they are on strike! It is very sad that we toy with the future of our children”.

President John Mahama, who was present at the occasion, appeared to have appreciated the effects of the abrasive remarks and threw in a damage control intervention by explaining that the retired Brigadier was only asking Ghanaians to join hands in pushing the development agenda of the nation.

However, General Secretary of the Ghana Medical Association, Dr. Frank Serebour said the National Security advisor’s comments were misplaced.

He stated that strike was part of the tools for labour negotiation and thus if any labour organization embarked on a strike, it could not be described as indiscipline.

Dr. Serebour described as “unfortunate” the comments by the security capo since, according to him, doctors sacrificed everyday just to ensure patients got the best of service.

“If he [Nunoo Mensah] thinks that he has done something and because of that he can spit on the face of some doctors and teachers then it is pathetic.”

The GMA General Secretary stressed that workers reserved the right to go on strike if the people responsible for their welfare failed to live up to expectation.

Source Daily Guide Ghana News

Nunoo Mensah to workers: You can leave Ghana if you not happy