We never took money from gov’t and suspended the strike – Organised Labour

Organised Labour has refuted claims alleging its leadership took money from government and suspended its planned nationwide strike scheduled for October 10, 2024.

The intended strike was to mountain pressure on government to declare a state of emergency on illegal mining due the devastating effect of the menace of water bodies and forest reserves.

According to them, the measures fashioned out by government are convincing hence the reason the strike was called off.

King Ali Awudu, a member of Organised Labour, denied the claims saying, “Whenever somebody is of a certain opinion, and another has a dissenting opinion the easy thing some people in this country would do is to accuse you of going to A or B. But mind you, so many organizations in this country have threatened to do certain things about galamsey but the government never mind them, including the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.”

King Ali Awudu explained that impressive among these measures is the revocation of Regulations, 2023 (L.I 2462) that allows for mining in reserve forest.

He added “Since December 2023, they have issued notices to the government to revoke the LI that allows mining in forest reserves, but the government has never minded them.”

“Organised Labour comes in and in less than a month, the government has issued the directives for the LI to be revoked. This is what we want. It is being achieved. Why do we go on strike?” he quizzed.

However, Ghanaians are battling with the pollution of water bodies, farmlands and forest reserves due to illegal mining.