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 The newly elected executive being sworn in immediately after their election at the 10th Quadrennial Delegates Congress at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi.  They are (from right to left): the Chairperson, Reverend Richard K. Yeboah; 1st Vice- Chairperson, Alex Nyarko-Opoku; 2nd Vice–Chairperson, Philomena Aba Samson; Secretary-General, Dr Yaw Baah, and Deputy Secretary-General, Joshua Ansah
The newly elected executive being sworn in immediately after their election at the 10th Quadrennial Delegates Congress at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. They are (from right to left): the Chairperson, Reverend Richard K. Yeboah; 1st Vice- Chairperson, Alex Nyarko-Opoku; 2nd Vice–Chairperson, Philomena Aba Samson; Secretary-General, Dr Yaw Baah, and Deputy Secretary-General, Joshua Ansah

Dr Yaw Baah leads TUC

A deputy secretary-general of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Dr Anthony Yaw Baah, has been elected as the new Secretary-General.

Dr Baah was elected unopposed by nearly 1,000 delegates from 17 affiliate unions at the end of the 10th Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the TUC  at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi last Thursday.

He succeeds Mr Kofi Asamoah, who held the position for two terms. 

Supervised by the Electoral Commission (EC), the elections, which went deep into Thursday night, also saw the election of four other executive members, made up of the Chairman of the TUC, his two deputies and  the deputy secretary-general. Rev. Richard Kwasi Yeboah, who was the acting chairman,  was elected as the substantive National Chairman. 

The positions of First and Second Vice-Chairpersons went to Mr Alex Nyarko of the Union of Industry, Commerce and Finance Workers (UNICOF) and Ms Philomena Aba Sampson of the Ghana Mineworkers Union, respectively. 

They were elected unopposed.

Mr Joshua Ansah was elected the Deputy General-Secretary.

 The chairman position which produced two candidates, was not contested, probably because Rev. Yeboah was nominated by 16 affiliates, while his contender, Peter Lumor of the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) had just one nomination without any seconder. By the regulations governing the election, Rev. Yeboah was thus elected unopposed.

 The 11 members of the Finance Board of the TUC were also elected. The board will elect its chairman later.

Dr Baah grateful

In his acceptance speech, the new secretary-general thanked the delegates and affiliate unions of the labour movement for the confidence reposed in him to lead the TUC for the next four years.

 He also expressed appreciation to his predecessor and the other past executive members for their support and encouragement that had brought him that far.

The Ashanti Regional Director of the EC, Mr Serebuor Quaicoo, led the team from the EC to supervise the elections.

Conference decisions 

Earlier, the conference had discussed and adopted new policies on sectors, including economic management, employment, incomes, industrial relations and social dialogue.

Others were social protection, governance, housing, energy and power.

It also discussed major challenges facing the working people of Ghana and adopted resolutions to confront those challenges.

Profile of Dr Baah

Dr Yaw Baah was employed by the TUC in 1993 as a researcher. He was promoted to Deputy Head of Research in 1997 and Head of Research in 1998.

He was appointed the first Director of the Labour Research and Policy Institute of the TUC which was established in 2006. 

In 2008, he was elected Deputy Secretary-General of the TUC at the 8th Quadrennial Delegates Congress in Kumasi. 

Currently, he is a Board Member of the Ghana Statistical Service, the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA) and a member of the Advisory Board of the International Centre for Development and Decent Work (ICDD) at the University of Kassel in Germany.

He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom; an MSc in Financial Economics from the Norwegian School of Management, Oslo, Norway; and a BA in Economics from the University of Ghana. 

His other academic awards include Diploma from the International Institute for Labour and Cooperative Studies, Tel Aviv, Israel; the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Training Centre in Turin, Italy; and certificates in Core Labour Market Analysis and Pensions from the World Bank Institute in Washington, DC, USA. 

He is a part-time lecturer in Labour Studies at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Cape Coast, Ghana, and founder member of the African Labour Research Network (ALRN).

 

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