44.5m to be unempolyed by 2014 unless… - OATUU

By The Citizen

AFRICAN workers have warned world leaders on the dangers of abandoning the unemployed and other vulnerable people in the world or 44.5 million workers would enter the labour market by June 2014.

Under the umbrella of the Organisation of African Trade Union Unity, OATUU, the workers argued that just as the state did not abandon troubled private business interest to the so-called market forces, it should not abandon the poor, indisposed, unemployed, homeless, sick, aged and the hapless to the insatiable thirst of the market forces.

Speaking through the Secretary-General of OATUU, Mr. Owei Lakemfa, at plenary of the International Labour Organisation, ILO, they called on ILO to reject the policies of allowing market forces to control the economy.

They argued that recent happenings in global economy had shown that the state remained the most important instrument in the socio-economic well being of the citizenry.

Lakemfa contended that the hypothesis that the private sector was the engine of development was false, stressing that the financial crises, and the role of the state in bailing out the private sector in countries of industrialised world had put a lie to the propaganda that government had no business in business.

He said: 'It is in this wise that ILO has to reject the evangelism of the market place in which human beings are objects and mere statistics in the balancing of budgets. Making profit is good, but not at the cost of human lives.

'The fact that public funds are used to bail out private banks shows that the state remains the most important instrument in the socio-economic well being of the citizenry.'