Akufo-Addo must crack the whip on GPHA delay tactics - Ex-Workers
The over four thousand ex-workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority who were retrenched in 2002 without their severance benefits have urged President Nana Akufo-Addo to be punitive with the leadership of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) over their failure to pay the ex-workers as instructed by the President in August 2023.
Speaking to this reporter, leader of the aggrieved ex-workers, Stephen Ashitey Adjei, pointed out that the GPHA’s behaviour is tantamount to a deliberate defiance of the President’s directive.
“Such recalcitrance must not be entertained because if it is allowed, it will establish a precedent that is absolutely unhealthy for the health of governance in our country,” he added.
It therefore called on President Akufo-Addo to, “crack the whip and let there be consequences for those who have dared defied the leader of the people.”
The statement is a complaint against the GPHA which has failed to pay the ex-workers their benefits even though President Akufo-Addo instructed the Authority to pay the ex-workers in August last year.
Until 2023 when the President ordered the payment, the over four thousand ex-workers had remained unpaid since their retrenchment in 2002. This is in spite of the fact that five of their colleagues, have somehow been paid while the rest have been ignored.“If this defiance is allowed to stand, it will be the second time that GPHA will be getting away with such disrespectful behaviour and so the President must crack the whip,” Mr. Ashitey Adjei pointed out.
According to him, “discipline is good for the soul,” and that, “even Jesus cracked the whip when the people got way too out of line.”The first presidential defiance by GPHA happened in 2012 when the Authority similarly turned cold shoulder to a fiat from then President John Evans Atta Mills to pay the ex-workers.
Even though Mills had suddenly died in office soon after that fiat, and former President John Mahama, who as Mills’ Vice took over as President after Mills’ death, botched the whole process, the ex-workers say that GPHA cannot be absolved of blame.
“This is because, the GPHA is the one which retrenched us in 2002, and turned round to pay just five out of the over 4,000 of us. The GPHA could have therefore fought for us so that Mr. John Mahama would carried through with the fiat that President Mills had issued.”
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