THE Ghana Statistical Ser­vice has organised a three-day national workshop to harmonise concepts and defini­tions of labour migration statistics in Ghana.

The workshop, organised by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) last Tuesday with technical support from the International Labour Or­ganisation (ILO), brought together representatives from government agencies, academia, employers’ and workers’ groups, and development partners.

Opening remarks were also delivered by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Ghana Employers’ Association (GEA), the Ghanaian European Centre for Jobs, Migration and Development (GEC) of GIZ, and the ILO.

They all underscored the need for coordinated action in protect­ing migrant workers and address­ing the challenges of recruitment costs, trafficking and labour exploitation.

The three-day programme re­viewed national data sources such as censuses, labour force surveys and administrative records, and compare them with international standards from the ILO, International Organ­isation for Migration (IOM) and the United Nations.

Participants will examine defini­tional and methodological gaps, dis­cuss recruitment cost components, and work in groups to propose harmonised concepts.

The expected outcomes of the workshop included a validated set of national definitions on labour migration and recruitment costs, a harmonisation framework for national data producers, and rec­ommendations for future capacity building.

An ILO Official, Mr Kamil Abu­bakari, who facilitated the sessions alongside senior labour statistician, Mr Yacouba Diallo, said the exercise would enable Ghana to improve the coherence and comparability of its data in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Global Compact for Migration.

The workshop ended with the validation of agreed definitions and the adoption of a roadmap for their integration into Ghana’s national statistical system.

It called for stronger collabora­tion among state institutions and international partners to ensure credible and comparable data on migration.