The Minister’s reaction followed series of accusations and counter-accusations, demonstrations, petitions and legal battles between the GCCL workers and management that has raged on for almost a year now leading to the temporal closure of the company.
The embattled GCCL workers in all the operational divisions in Tamale, Tumu and Bolgatanga have refused to be on duty due to diverse problems confronting them with the issue of outstanding salaries being the most prominent. They are now demanding for the immediate removal of the current Management led by Mr. Kingsley Oseiku as Managing Director. Saying “We can no longer work with our current management because we have lost confidence in them. But if government wants to maintain them to continue the rotten dealings then they should pay us our benefits and we all go”.
However, in an interaction with the workers and management, the Deputy Minister of Trade who seemed to have acquainted himself with most of the problems confronting the workers emanating from managerial deficiencies, maintained that the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in its quest to revive the Cotton Industry would not condone any irresponsible behavior on the part of management or workers of the company who “are just a handful at the expense of the over 500,000 cotton farmers in Ghana who could offer vital votes to NDC in 2012”.
He explained that the intended restructuring exercise could entail that some management members or all of them out of office or better still some workers or all of them could be laid off and new people recruited. But that he said would depend on the outcome of independent investigations the government had agreed to institute into the operations of the Management of the GCCL, especially in the last decade.
Mr. Ayariga conceded that governments over the years had not done much or given special attention to the Cotton Industry, which gives jobs to almost a million Ghanaians including farmers, input dealers and core staff of the industry among others.
However, the NDC government and for that matter the Trade Ministry he noted had advanced in plans to ensuring that the Cotton Industry was comprehensively revamped to give hope to farmers who were into cotton business and also boost Ghana’s Textile Industry.
Meanwhile, cotton is one of the few commodities that are of great economic value to the people of the three Northern Regions of Ghana in particular but the Industry keeps retrogressing due to lack of political will, poor national policies, management and high cost of inputs. The situation according to Mr. Ayariga had affected all the other institutions and businesses associated with the cotton industry.
He noted that unlike the neighbouring Cote D’Ivoire and Burkina Faso who produce over 200,000 metric tons of cotton annually, Ghana cannot boast of even 10,000 metric tons of the product in a year.
The Minister therefore revealed that his Ministry was in talks with some multi-national agencies for adequate funding towards reviving the Industry, but his major worry was about the way the GCCL was highly indebted to so many agencies, organizations and individuals.
He however assured the workers of the immediate release of their outstanding salaries.
On the other hand, the Local Trade Union Congress (TUC) Chairman for the GCCL, Mr. Raphael Zuanah in a resolution titled “Lost of Confidence in Current Management” signed by the Union Leaders and presented to the Deputy Minister registered the discomfort of the entire workers in working with the current management of the GCCL and called for their immediate termination.
They argued that the continuous stay of the Management in office could easily derail the good efforts of government in revitalizing the company.
The Workers accused the Management of presiding over losses for the past 10 years and could not formulate policies to turn the fortunes of the company around. They also asserted that the Management had unjustifiably adjusted their salaries upward leaving the rest of the workers and also continue to use borrowed monies meant for operations of the GCCL to sponsor themselves at GIMPA to undertake Executive Masters Degree Programmes at the expense of production.
What seems to have aggravated the suffering of the poor workers according to the Union Leaders was the fat car loans given to 11 management staff at a time the Company was owing the workers for over 4 months salaries and also converted their annual leaves into huge sums of money.
They also accused the Management of regular diversion of lint cotton and cotton seed and monies paid into private accounts.
“The Management continues to maintain huge number of 24 management team and their huge salaries put so much pressure on the company’s limited resources making the company sink year after year. It is sad to note that the salaries of the 24 management staff put together can pay the rest of the entire work force, since the lowest management staff salary stand at 1,800 Ghana cedis and the workers are pegged between 80 Ghana cedis and 130 Ghana cedis.
The aggrieved workers also accused the management of staff intimidations, victimization, force transfers without transfer grants and possible dismissals, whenever their illegal activities were questioned.
The GCCL workers therefore appealed to Mr. Mahama Ayariga to personally take interest in the concerns of the workers and institute independent probe into the activities of the Management as part of the restructuring exercise.
However, none of the management members including the Managing Director, Kingsley Oseiku was willing to respond to the accusations leveled against them by the workers, even though the Deputy Trade Minister offered them the opportunity to respond.
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