More Trouble At Ghanair

Senior Staff, Workers Union Decry Poor Management

"Come to Macedonia and help us," this was the cry by the Ghana Airways Senior Staff Association (GASSA) and the Local Union members to the government during a press conference by the two powerful bodies of the troubled airline on last week.

The two bodies appealed to the government to take a critical look at the management of the troubled airline to avoid past mistakes that pushed the company into its present predicaments.

It was admitted that in spite of the agitation for the state to step in and bail the airline, if the company does not put its house in order, it will continue to wallow in its present predicaments, even if all the national budget is handed over to the company.

According to GASSA and Union members, nothing seems to have changed in the management of Ghanair because the company's debts continue to swell each passing day.

"The same old hands and people, whose commissions and omissions in Emmanuel Quartey administration had brought us this far, are still manipulating the system and controlling the affairs of the airline hence the continued decline of the progress of the company ," Chronicle heard.

"It is not only in the Ghana Football Association (GFA) that we have three wise men. There is another set of three wise men in Ghana Airways whose modus operandi has brought the national airline to its current position," a dejected looking staff pointed out.

GASSA and the Union were of the view that if government does not throw a prompt life-line to salvage Ghanair there was no way that the company could stand on its feet till the completion of the Forensic Audit, which is to be commissioned to look into how the company was mismanaged.

Addressing the press, Mr. Roland Wobil Mosore, President of the Senior Staff Association and national chairman of General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union of T.U.C noted that this was not the time to apportion blame to single individuals but "all the workers must be collectively blamed for the present state of the airline."

However, he attributed the present precarious position of Ghanair to lack of transparency in the management of the company, coupled with political patronage that had been the order of the day.

Mosore also blamed the past government for engineering and supervising the destruction of Ghanair.

The President of the Senior Staff Association recounted how masked soldiers stormed KIA one afternoon in 1994 and hijacked Ghanair's ground handling equipment, which was a major source of income to the company, and handed it over to AFGO.

"It is not that when things were going astray we did not alert the management or draw their attention, but at a certain stage we were all living witnessed to the threats and victimization that were going on in the company," he said

According to Mosore, after the NDC government had wrestled the equipment from the company and given it to AFGO, Ghanair continued to service the loans it contracted for the purchase of the equipment.

"Apart from all these, it is disheartening to note that Ghanair pays $263,000 per month to AFGO for using our own equipment to render services for us," he lamented.

To rub salt on the injury, Mosore said, the catering service that was left to support the other source of income was also mysteriously taken and dashed to another company.

"When all these sources of revenue were taken away, the airline was left to make do with only income from the passenger service, which, we are all aware, is not reliable to sustain us," he said.

He also expressed grave concern about the maintenance agreement between Ghanair and Alitalia, the Italian airline.

He noted that under the terms of the contract, Alitalia continued to bill Ghanair the same amount even when it was clear that there was no aircraft for them to service for Ghanair.

It also came to light that the management of Ghanair sold all the company's spare parts to A.J. Walters and Alitalia some years back, but the parts are still stocked in Ghanair's stores in Accra and whenever Ghanair is in serious need of any parts the company then goes to its stores, takes the same parts they have sold out and pays hard earned dollars for them.

According GASSA and the Union, the company is viable but due to mismanagement of the place and the old hands that are still controlling almost everything nothing seems to be moving towards its viability.