This, according to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Mr Alex Frimpong, was because statistics on various complaints from the National Labour Commission (NLC) had revealed that the NLC received a total of 6,657 complaints over the past decade.

He said the figure meant that on the average, the Commission received 66 complaints each year, translating into 55 per month.

Mr Frimpong was speaking at the opening of a two-day training on mediation and arbitration organised by the GEA in Accra yesterday with support from the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise.

It was aimed at improving the work of Mediators and Arbitrators to strengthen the dispute resolution value chain for expeditious facilitation of justice.

The training also sought to offer participants the opportunity to tap into the rich experiences of the facilitators of the workshop and how to effectively engage the NLC, in the event that a dispute is reported to them.

According to Mr Frimpong, his outfit’s collaboration with the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise led to the development of a code of conduct and rules for mediators and arbitrators to provide practitioners a standard and acceptable conduct in the practice of Mediation and Arbitration.

He was of the conviction that the training would further contribute immensely to the promotion of stability and harmony within the industrial relations environment.

Chairman of the NLC, Justice Kwabena Asuman-Adu, in his remarks mentioned that to effectively perform their duties, Arbitrators and Mediators needed to be neutral “this is because a neutral trained mediator works to help disputants come to a consensus on their own.”

He stated that training programmes at work places helped build capacities of employees to make them more efficient, adding that it was therefore necessary for all employees to take training opportunities seriously to improve upon their competencies.

“The qualifications that you have acquired will help you obtain the job but it is the training programmes that your employers offer you that will help develop your skills and make you more competent,” he added.

Mr Asuman-Adu commended the GEA for organising the training session and also expressed gratitude to the Confederation of the Norwegian Enterprise for their support for the programme.