Baker Hughes sued for GHC25m

A-41-year-old former employee of Baker Hughes Ghana Limited has dragged the company to an Accra Human Rights Court demanding GHC25 million compensation.

The plaintiff, Francis Omane, a former driver of the oil and gas company, wants the court to compel the company to also pay him all his entitlements, including insurance package and welfare fund because of a spine fracture he sustained while working for the firm.

Lawyers of the plaintiff, Akwetey & Associates, insist that the company has abandoned the plaintiff due to his permanent health condition.

According to the 88-paragraph statement of claim, Francis was on September 1, 2009 moving heavy tools and equipment at Takoradi to build the company’s workshop to the required standard.

It said some of the heavy tools and equipment which could not be taken into the cage by a forklift had to be moved manually by the plaintiff and other workers in the warehouse.

Lawyer Bright Akwetey, who is representing the plaintiff, further avers that on December 31, 2009, while Francis and other workers were working and lifting the Pop-Joint Lift Nipple heavy tool manually in the warehouse, his client felt a sharp twitch at his back and dropped the tool on the floor.

He said from that day his client had been feeling intermittent pains, adding that from January last year, the company had refused to pay the plaintiff’s medical bills and prescribed drugs with the excuse that Francis’ bills were expensive.

The lawyer among other things, contend that Banker Hughes Human Resource Manger “has inexplicably actively engaged herself in a mischievous effort to play down the plaintiff’s affliction and with falsehood once attempted to impute plaintiff’s injury to a pre-existing medical condition.”

As a result, Francis’ lawyers want the court to declare that the plaintiff was a healthy, strong and medically fit 37-year-old man when he was employed by the company.

Lawyer Akwetey also wants an order declaring that Francis sustained the injury which has caused his permanent multiple incapacitation on the job on December, 31, 2009 while working for the company in Takoradi.