The Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG) says more than 60,000 of its members will begin a nationwide strike on March 9, 2026, to demand the immediate implementation of conditions of service agreed to in 2023.
At a February 19 news conference in Accra, Executive Secretary Isaac Bampoe Addo said the decision follows “prolonged delays by the appropriate authorities in addressing the concerns of members.” He added that while the association remains open to dialogue, “concrete steps must be taken to implement the agreed terms.”
The strike, if carried out, is expected to disrupt operations across civil and local government offices nationwide. CLOGSAG staged a similar action in March 2025 over the same issue.
Labour Minister Rashid Pelpuo has appealed to the union to reconsider. “I have had discussions with the leadership and I have told them about the need not to be on strike, but to start by doing the talking,” Pelpuo said in an interview on March 5. He warned that continued industrial action “has impacted negatively on government businesses.”
Pelpuo said he is in talks with the presidency to resolve the matter. “I believe that CLOGSAG appreciates the situation we are in now. As a new government it is important that we don’t start by having problems with them,” he said. “CLOGSAG understands the broad dimension of what is happening, they would want to go along with the President, but they have raised these issues to the effect that the man is a politically exposed person.”
The dispute also centers on the Registrar of Births and Deaths Registry, whom CLOGSAG argues is politically exposed and compromises the neutrality of the civil service. The association has petitioned the minister to reassign the registrar. “This is a test case,” Bampoe Addo said. “Should we remain silent, it is going to open the flood gate. It is about Ghana.”
Pelpuo said President John Dramani Mahama is “not happy with the strike” and hopes it will end soon. “My idea was for them to continue working whilst we resolve the matter, but their idea was for me to tell the President to withdraw him whilst we start talking,” he explained.
Bampoe Addo said the union will call off the strike only after receiving a formal response to its petition. “I am concerned about Ghana, this is about Ghana,” he said. “Some of these things when Ken Ofori-Atta was the finance minister when he was filling the finance ministry with party apparatchiks and goro boys, what was the end results, and we sometimes blame ourselves for not shouting louder, this time we want to shout louder.”
