LAID OFF workers of the Ghana Reinsurance Company Limited, yesterday demonstrated against the management of the company over what they termed lack of transparency in the severance bargaining agreement.
The workers, numbering about 60, entered the premises by breaking through the gate after the Managing Director, Mr. Sampson A. Nuamah, had instructed the security personnel to lock up the gate in order to prevent them from entering the compound of the company.
Narrating their side of the story, Ben Nortey, the chairman of the workers union of the company, said the physical confrontation with the management had become necessary because of differences over bargaining agreements on the severance package. While the retrenched workers asked for 2.5% the management also said it could offer 2%.
As a result, he said, on December 27, last year's retrenchment letters were dispatched to them indicating that the company had dispensed with their services with immediate effect. He added that they were informed that the union's position in the negotiations of the severance awards had been incorporated in the 2001\2002 collective bargaining agreements, which he said were done without their knowledge.
In a quick response to the agitation of the retrenched workers, the Managing Director of the company, Mr. Sampson A. Nuamah, said that the workers were having a particular agenda of denting the image of the credible national asset, adding that the workers themselves knew that the management position was good.
He said, this was not the first time retrenchment had been done a state institution like Ghana Reinsurance, citing GNPC where redundant workers were paid half severance award as an example.
He revealed that 20 out of 60 workers who had been retrenched had already collected their cheques. He said most of the workers had benefited from the mortgage policy, adding that the highest amount paid was 287million cedis to an administrative officer who had served for 33 years while the lowest amount was 4.3 million cedis paid to a gardener who had worked for a period of ten years and 5 months. He said a total of 3.7billion cedis had spent on the exercise.
