The Progressive Nationalist Forum (PNF) has warned that the committee set up by the governing National Democratic Congress (NDC) to create jobs for its members could lead to a crisis in the country.
The spokesperson for the group, Richard Nyamah on Eyewitness News said: “His [Kofi Portuphy] statement has the potential of sinking this country into war and I am saying this as a political analyst.”
“They may not be calling us to arms but they are indirectly doing that by discriminating against the rest that may not necessarily be NDC card bearing members,” he added.
The NDC has set up a business development committee chaired by the Trade and Industry Ministry, Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah to create jobs for party members.
The party has however denied the existence of the committee although its national chairman, Kofi Portuphy announced it at a press briefing.
The party’s national organizer, Kofi Adams however said if such a committee existed, its job creation mandate should be lauded because it is a good initiative.
According to Richard Nyamah however, the idea behind the formation of the business development committee is “unconstitutional” and must therefore be banned.
He explained that Article 17 clause 1 of the 1992 constitution of the republic of Ghana, states that ‘”all persons shall be equal before the law.’’
He further mentioned that the clause 3 of the same Article 3 indicates that ‘’for the purpose of this article, ‘’discrimination’’ means to give different treatment to different persons attributable only or mainly to their respective descriptions by race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, gender, occupation, religion or creed, whereby persons of one description are subjected to disabilities or restrictions to which persons of another description are not made subject or granted privileges or advantages which are not granted to persons of another description’’
Nyamah also said the committee is in breach of the labour act 2003 act 651 which states in clause 14 that ‘’an employer shall not in respect of any person seeking employment, or of persons already in his employment: (e)) discriminate against the person on grounds of gender, race, colour, ethnic origin, religion, creed, social or economic status, disability or politics.’’
He pointed out that the issue of youth unemployment is a national security threat especially in a situation where “tens of thousands of Ghanaians are jobless and you think this is a false sense of insecurity?”
Nyamah remarked that with the rising case of youth unemployment in Ghana, if the NDC proceeds to create jobs for its members to the neglect of non-NDC members, “they [non-NDC members] will obviously feel discriminated against and they will have the cause to want to take up arms and the devil finds work for the idle hands.”
The PNF is therefore calling on Kofi Portuphy to immediately “disband this committee and apologize to the good people of Ghana just like the General Secretary did when he realized he had brought the name of Togbe Afede into disrepute and also violating the constitution which frowns on chiefs engaging in partisan politics.”
The PNF warned that if the chairman fails to do as demanded, they will seek legal redress “to stop the government from sinking this country into war through such unconstitutional, discriminatory parochial and partisan programme.”
Source: citifmonline
