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Mr Elvis Van-Lare, Volta Regional Secretary of the Ghana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) has suggested that the nation brainstorms for a better way of commemorating the country�s independence. He said nationwide parades of school children, usually under the scorching tropical sun �certainly has outlived the times.� Mr Van-Lare was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on the eve of Ghana�s 57 independence anniversary which falls on Thursday. He said he believed the independence parades were now only opportunities for politicians to play with words as �they have nothing new to tell anybody�. He replied with an emphatic �no� when asked if the Ghanaian worker�s situation was better today than at independence. �These past 57 years, governments have been telling us workers things would improve, when we know and feel that life is getting harder for many of us year after year,� Mr Van-Lare lamented. He said real incomes of workers had been sliding and quality of life was hardly improving. �Indeed workers at the time of independence reflected more confidence in themselves, lived better than today,� Mr Van-Lare stated. He said he could not understand why the situation of the worker in Ghana was always hovering in and out of the bottom-line when the country had a lot of resources. �Even now Ghana is exporting crude oil, but its benefits to the ordinary person are not visible,� he added. Rather than the workers having some respite from the exploitation of these resources, they �are under the scourge of bi-weekly increases in fuel prices, making them distraught". �Ghana at 57 is crawling, seriously crawling when other countries are galloping,� he stated.