'No Frances, no work' – GCMC staff chant

Workers of the Ghana Cylinder Manufacturing Company Limited (GCMC) are resisting attempts by the Board to remove their Chief Executive Officer Frances Essiam.

Clad in red armed bands, the war song chanting workers picketed the premises of the state-owned company to register their displeasure against the board for voting to suspend Ms Essiam, Accra News' Fred Alvis Agbenyo reported on Wednesday, saying: “No Frances, No work’; we cannot afford to lose our jobs, we want Frances, she is doing a good work.”

Some of them told Agbenyo that: “We heard in the news that the Board Chair has suspended our CEO. We want to know what is actually going on. The CEO was appointed by the president and not the Board. All of us are working towards the same goal.”

On Tuesday evening, six of the nine-member board voted in favour of Ms Essiam’s suspension at a meeting held outside the premises of GCMC due to a lock-out on the orders of the embattled CEO, a situation that barred staff of the company from gaining access to their offices when they turned up for work that day.

Among other things, the Board wrote to Ms Essiam asking her to explain why she unilaterally contracted a loan to pay workers’ February salary without the board’s knowledge and approval.

The board also demanded answers from the CEO about why she ordered the sale of a disused machine belonging to the company.

She was retrained by the board from touching a GHS5m stimulus package secured for the company by the government.