GPHA Ex-workers leader Calls out Silent Moral society Over Retrenchment Injustice
As the country commemorates the birthday of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, founding father of Ghana, leader of the over 4,000 ex-workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority whose benefits have not been paid after they were retrenched in 2002 has reflected on the hypocrisy of the nation’s eagerness to honour Nkrumah’s name while it neglects the people centred values that defined Nkrumah.
In so doing, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, has called out Ghana’s political and moral society over their failing to see to it that injustices against the poor, including the pure wicked refusal of the GPHA to pay its ex-workers their due, are corrected.
“As the 21st of September comes round again and brings with it the eagerness to remember Nkrumah, I ask myself, with what hands are we going to write the tributes that we are going to read to him; the same hands that have been stained with injustice?” Moshake asked rhetorically in a statement published on Wednesday.
According to him, “we insult the memory of Nkrumah if we commemorate his birthday again with such monumental injustice as the one that the GPHA has done to the over 4,000 ex-workers it retrenched 21 years ago without a penny.”
The ex-workers’ leader pointed out that in denying them their due, the GPHA had become the instrument of injustice against fellow citizens, “however as the saying goes, the burglar’s break-in is not as painful as the neglect of the watchman whose duty it is to provide security – why have our political and religious leaders and moral society not called the GPHA to order, two decades after the injustice was done?”
In 2002, over 4,000 workers of the GPHA were retrenched in a downsizing exercise. However, the workers were not paid their retrenchment benefits. This led to agitations led by Moshake. However, rather than pay the workers, the authorities strangely paid only 5 out of the over 4,000.
“When you have a country carrying such injustice on its hands, how dare we say we are celebrating Nkrumah, a hero of the common man, who would never countenance such crimes against humanity?” Moshake wrote.
He pointed out that in the failure to do justice, the politicians have been chiefly guilty. “After the GPHA committed that injustice, we agitated, and demonstrated and wrote letters to institutions of state including Parliament, they all turned the other way. As for the political parties, because a GPHA Director-General of the time was parceling money for them, the party’s leaders kept mute,” Moshake wrote.
According to him, “only the late president Mills, gave us hope because he issued a fiat for us to be paid, however, Mills died in office around that same time and our issue landed on the lap of then President John Mahama. Mr. Mahama did not even reply our letters as he superintended over the reversal of Mills’ fiat.”
Moshake reiterated that many of the ex-workers have since died from abject poverty and melancholy, some have lost their sanity and are roaming the streets of Tema and Takoradi while at least one person lives under a tree because he cannot afford accommodation. “
All these are happening even as our politicians continue to enjoy ex-gratia when they finish their terms in office. John Mahama is still enjoying ex-gratia even though he claims that he will cancel it if he becomes president again, while president Akufo-Addo has set up a committee to upgrade the emoluments of Article 71 officeholders”
He pointed out that Ghana’s moral society has also failed woefully in their duty to ensure that such injustice is rectified. “we have appealed to our chiefs, our pastors and our imams, but what have they done? nothing!”
An unhappy Moshake urged these pastors and imams and chiefs to ask themselves if Jesus, or the Prophet Mohammed or the gods of the land whom they claim to be beholden too, “can be happy with you over such neglect at your moral duty to defend the poor and downtrodden in society?”
Emphasizing that the commemoration of Nkrumah’s birthday insults the memory of the founding father of Ghana, Moshake said “the country does not need pomp and pageantry, but Godfearing leaders.”
The ex-workers leader called on moral society to rise up and call the GPHA to order. “The politicians have perpetrated this injustice for over 20 years, some MP and MCE who were supposed to help correct this injustice turned a blind eye. Must you the men and women of God also continue to fail in your duty to prick the conscience of society?”
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