AGC lays off 800 workers

Eight hundred workers of the Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) have been asked to go home in what officials say is a measure to cut operating costs and enhance the company's competitiveness.

This is despite the company exceeding its gold production target and operating at a cost far below budget levels. To cut cost further at AGC Obuasi mines, Mr. Alan Dodds, Managing Director of the Freda Rebecca Mines in Zimbabwe has been transferred to Obuasi.

Official sources say he is being transferred because the Zimbabwean mines was the lowest cost operating mine in the Ashanti conglomerate.