When organized labour called off its intended strike over illegal mining, the academic fashionista and NDC’s lead social media campaigner, Professor Ransford Gyampo immediately granted a bevy of media interviews, and crowned that with a long ego-massaging Facebook post. In these interviews and commentaries, the Prof called out organized labour in his usual hyper-emotional, contradictory and illogical posturing, garnering substantial cheers from largely NDC elements, whose last hope for electoral salvation was the threat by organized labour to shut down the country.
Gyampo’s Facebook post must be a source of profound worry to my former UTAG Colleagues, and especially to the National leadership of UTAG based at the premier University of the North -UDS. Prof Gyampo, in trademark condescending diction accused organized labour for lack of candour, and authoritatively hinted that he will railroad the pliant UTAG leadership to declare a strike action.
The fact that the UTAG leadership did not see anything wrong with the ego-chasing Professor’s adventures raises worrying questions about their own sincerity and integrity in the galamsey brouhaha. He sought glory by undermining the leadership, sadly they casually endorsed it.
We first have to ask, and proceed to answer the question; why is UTAG on strike? UTAG itself has no answer except that a single person who knows more than everybody in this country wants to please his pay masters.
The original motion for strike, according to sources within UTAG, was to join organized labour in the well-intentioned galamsey advocacy to get government to take immediate action. We were subsequently informed that government had accepted most of the major and sensible proposals put forward by organized labour to halt the galamsey menace. Organized labour responded by suspending the strike, like any rational group will do. UTAG (Prof Gyampo) failed to behave rationally, opting instead for showmanship and needless bravado. The reasonable expectation was that UTAG would have rather behaved like organized labour, and proceeded to subject government’s proposals to diligent scrutiny. It is a shame that the nation’s intellectual force pandered to the greedy motives of a self-seeking political activist in academic gown.
All along, Gyampo’s version of UTAG insisted it was committed to ending galamsey devoid of politics. They contended that pragmatic solutions were needed to preserve our environment and water bodies. But it is strange that a group, an intellectual one at that, seeking solutions to a problem did not find the proprietary in evaluating proposals from a major stakeholder like government, and opted instead to direct government to declare a state of emergency.
