Take a closer look at the New Patriotic (NPP) Manifesto for the 2000 elections. Again, take into account some of the denials, which have come from the leadership of the NPP in relation to some of the promises they made.
But since the Ghanaian policeman would say, “book no lie”, a statement by the NPP in its manifesto reads: “Establishment of a National Youth Corps to create at least 100,000 jobs by the end of the first year and even more in subsequent years…” How many jobs have been created so far is for you to guess.
But just last week at the Castle, when the President J.A. Kufuor had a party for the privileged workers, he had announced to the effect that some civil servants at the Castle would have to be axed and that they should be prepared for it.
A senior journalist and the editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt, said last week that the country was virtually in serious economic crisis. To him, the signs are bad and that there is already the threat that about 60 per cent of the workforce in the Public Service may be retrenched.
What a prophecy? The redundancy exercise has started in earnest. Just last week, the Ghana Reinsurance Company Limited (GRC), a 100 per cent government subvented company laid off 60 out of its 127 workforce.
The decision, according to Sampson Nuamah, the Managing Director (MD) was not his but the government, the board of directors and the management of the company to save it from collapse. According to the MD, the GRC had both technical and auxiliary staff of about 127.
Unfortunately, in line with its new policy and direction to revert to its core business, the board of directors, the government and management, after a comprehensive forensic audit decided to adequately compensate the 60 affected workers who have been declared redundant so as to avoid the generation of bad blood between them and the company.
Nuamah who even though was not happy about the measures that the company had been forced to take, blamed the affected workers for their inability to take advantage of the long standing company’s educational policy to extend the frontiers of their knowledge to enable them cope with the demands of modern companies.
Said he, “the world has reached a stage where illiteracy is inimical to companies development and therefore cannot survive a modern scientific company as GRC.” But some of the workers think that some element of victimisation was introduced into the whole redundancy exercise.
According to the local Union Leader, Ben Nortey a member of the Accounts Section who has also been affected, told The Ghanaian Voice at the GRC premises that they did have any problem with the exercise per se, but the procedure and criteria which was used by management which appear strange since they were contrary to the industrial laws of the country.
He pointed out that, in all its deliberations, GRC management had not been able to define for the affected workers the criteria used to effect the redundancy exercise. That apart, the local union had written to management reminding it long before that their Collective Bargaining Agreement had expired two years ago. But Management ignored them only to use the old agreement today, which had one and half months times the years of service to compute for their severance award.
Nortey also claimed that even though the incentive given them is motivational enough, the process used in dealing with the redundancy exercise is flawed and must be reviewed because in all its deliberations, the TUC had been left out.
The Union Leader said that in order not to create any industrial unrest, GRC should immediately halt the redundancy exercise and revert to the negotiation table for all to understand the procedure used to lay off 60 workers or forever not have peace.
Although some attempts were made to get in touch with Napoleon Kpoh, the industrial union workers boss, it did not meet success as he could not be reached.
