Layoffs without severance package 'unacceptable' – PEF to CBG

President of the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF), Nana Osei Bonsu, has entreated management of the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited (CBG) and other authorities in the banking sector to ensure that retrenched workers are duly compensated.

“I read in one of the papers that some people are going to be sent home without a package and that is unacceptable.

“People’s lives are involved, and some of them through no fault of theirs, and if we are going to retrench, you have to do that with a human face and make sure people are not going to suffer unduly,” Mr Bonsu told Moro Awudu on Class91.3 FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Tuesday, 11 September 2018.

Over 1,700 employees of CBG will, by the end of September 2018, lose their jobs.

Out of the number, 700 are mobile bankers of now-defunct Beige Bank, while 1,000 are former employees of The Royal Bank, The Construction Bank, uniBank and Sovereign Bank.

The Bank of Ghana recently fused uniBank together with Sovereign Bank, The Royal Bank, The Beige Bank and The Construction Bank to form the totally new state-owned CBG.

The fusion of the five banks followed the takeover of two other local banks: UT Bank and Capital Bank by GCB Bank in August 2017 with the blessing of the regulator after it emerged that they were in dire straits.

In total, seven local banks have gone under, as the Bank of Ghana’s 31 December 2018 deadline for all universal banks to recapitalise from the GHS120 million to GHS400 million draws closer.

Mr Bonsu was of the view that: “Because of the retrenchment, some people are going to be laid off but also, let us not forget the point that automation also results in lay-offs and the system is going to rely more on automation to reduce cost of doing business in those institutions and that is not the best for everybody”.

In his opinion, “You have to put a human face to the struggles that the system is going through but, at least, it has to be accompanied by packages”.