President, Organisation of Trade Unions in West Africa (OTUWA), Comrade Mademba Sock, has described as unacceptable the inability of governments in the sub region to adequately feed their population.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of OTUWA Working group on communication, Sock raised alarm over rising cases of poverty and hunger among workers and people of the west African sub region.
“We have focused attention on the theme of hunger and food security to underscore the fact that it is an important area in the lives of our members that we have, over the years, paid little attention to.
“A significant percentage of our members’ monthly budget is on food for the family. The inability of our respective governments in the sub region to adequately feed their population cannot obviously be a thing of joy for us as unions, he said.”
Speaking further, the union leader welcome the on-going efforts by unions to interrogate the root causes of the current state of food insecurity in the sub region.
In his remarks, President, Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Ayuba Wabba, described as sad the fact that four decades after the formation of ECOWAS in 1975, it cannot feed the citizens of the economic community
Comrade Wabba, however, blamed poor policy choices as well as policy inconsistencies for the inability of the ECOWAS sub region to achieve food sufficiency and security for the huge population of the sub region.
According to him, “our agricultural production methods have stagnated and hardly benefited from inputs of modern science and technology development.
It is my hope that the meeting will address the causes of these retardation in our agricultural policies in the sub region and clearly outline the roles that we can, as trade unions play, to change the situation in the interest of millions of poor working families in our Sub region.”
He urged trade unions in the sub region to invest in the campaign to ensure that incidences of people going to bed habitually hungry as a result of insufficient food on their table, must become things of the past in the region.
