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An Opportunity For Ghana To Help Coca-Cola

Sat, 21 Jul 2012 Source: Thompson, Kofi

....Of America Prevent Damage To Its Iconic Brand's Global Reputation?

By Kofi Thompson

Dear Captain (retired) Nkrabea Effah-Darteh,

Re: An Opportunity For Ghana To Help Coca-Cola Of America Prevent Damage To Its Iconic Brand's Global Reputation?

I shall go straight to the point: This could be a case that eventually attracts global media scrutiny. For, if all fails, I shall get the global activist group, Avaaz.Org, to take this matter up.

You must therefore take it seriously and fight a good fight - so that you and your client will prevail in the end.

It is also a rare opportunity for you and the law courts in Ghana to help a victim, made ill and ruined financially, as a direct result of the effects of the bad corporate governance practices at Coca-Cola Ghana Limited.

Sir, Coca-Cola of America would thank you profusely, if, as a result of your efforts, the damaging allegations made in sections of the Ghanaian media, by some workers of Coca-Cola Ghana Limited - during their last confrontation with the company's management, over pay and bonuses - was indeed confirmed to them by the court's decision in the matter now before it.

It is vital that an end is brought to the totally unacceptable situation, in which the local subsidiary of an iconic American corporate brand, is apparently producing soft drinks that are sometimes unwholesome, and are said to end up making some of those who ingest them seriously ill.

That shambles is the direct result of a company culture in which some of the management practices at Coca-Cola Ghana Limited are clearly mafia-like and byzantine in nature - to the extent that raw materials near their sell-by date are alleged to be purchased and routinely used in the production of the company's soft drinks, sold nationwide in Ghana.

You and the court must help the Coca-Cola company of America to purge its Ghanaian subsidiary of the local mafia into whose corrupt hands an iconic American brand with a global footprint has now apparently fallen.

And, above all, the court must finally enable an innocent Ghanaian lady - who purchased and drank their product only to fall so gravely ill that she is lucky to have survived - to get justice from those at Coca-Cola Ghana Limited, whose criminally negligent conduct made her ill and nearly caused her death.

That unfortunate Ghanaian lady must now have some closure, to a nightmare and ordeal she did not have to go through, if some elements in the management of Coca-Cola Ghana Limited had not so blatantly ignored the corporate good governance principles that guide its world-famous parent company, headquartered in the United States of America.

And it is to the United States of America that you may have to take your legal fight next, Sir - in the unlikely event that the law courts in Ghana too, succumb to the pervasive power and baleful influence, of the local mafia, into the hands of which Coca-Cola Ghana Limited has apparently fallen.

Tel: 027 745 3109.

Email: peakofi.thompson@gmail.com

Columnist: Thompson, Kofi