The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has warned Ghana’s employers to desist from paying their staff below the minimum wage announced by the government.

Mr Baffour Awuah said the government will take steps to ensure that any employer paying below the minimum wage rectifies the anomaly.

Speaking at the 59th Annual General Meeting of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Mr Baffour Awuah said sanctions will be meted out to companies that disobey the law.

“There’re still quite a number of employers who still do not pay people up to the minimum wage limit. I want to take this opportunity to urge you, especially those who are not paying up to the minimum wage. It is illegal to pay anybody that you engage below the agreed minimum wage and, therefore, we’ll urge each and every employer that engages people to pay their workers above the minimum wage.

“If it comes to our notice that, for some reasons, anybody is paying below the minimum wage, such persons will be sanctioned.

“I don’t want us to go that far because of the relationship we’ve built over the period. The government provides only seven per cent of work to Ghanaians so majority of our population find jobs outside the public sector.”

The government last month announced that the 2020 National Daily Minimum Wage (NDMW) had gone up 11 percentage point over the 2019 NDMW of GHC10.65 to GHC11.82, effective from 1 January 2020.