President Atta Mills Hated Injustice - GPHA Ex-Workers
Leader of the former workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) who were retrenched in 2002 without the payment of their severance benefits has paid glowing tribute to the humanity of late former President John Evans Fiifi Atta Mills, who initiated processes for the retrenched ex-workers to be paid.
On the sidelines of a wreath-laying ceremony in remembrance of Professor Atta Mills on Thursday, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, said only death could stop Prof. Mills from seeing through that justice was done for them.
“When death laid its icy hands on Professor Mills in July 2012, it robbed Ghana of its best president in the Fourth republic, but there are some of us who directly and personally suffered from this robbery by death– every single ex-worker of the GPHA who was retrenched without our benefits in 2002, was personally affected.
This is because, death had struck just at the time that President Mills had issued a fiat for us to be paid our benefits,” Moshake said.
The ex-workers’ leader who had personally exchanged letters with president Mills on their issue added painfully, that, “Prof. Mills was the most humane president that we have ever had and there is no doubt whatsoever that if he had not died, we would have been paid by now. We are covered by the CBA but only five of the affected workers have been well paid.”
The ex-workers were retrenched by the GPHA under the erstwhile Kufuor government without their severance benefits and started an agitation that they kept on until Professor Mills was elected President.
In fact, according to Moshake, whom the Kufuor government arrested and threw into cells several times over the agitation, Prof. Mills gave signals right from opposition that he would do justice to the ex-workers and so he personally campaigned for Prof. Mills to be elected president.
“GPHA was using delay tactics after President Mills was elected, this is what annoyed President Atta Mills to issue the fiat,” Moshake said, adding that, “for me, this was not surprising because president Mills had shown his humanity to us right from the beginning.”
In fact, while serving as the leader of the ex-workers, Moshake had also taken up the position of Organizer of a group called Friends of Prof. Atta Mills through which he campaigned against former President Kufuor in the lead-up to the general elections which Kufuor controversially won. Moshake’s activities had incurred the wrath of President Kufuor who used the GPHA to detain him several times at the James Fort prison in 2003.
But eventually, Prof. Mills won the 2008 election and as President instructed the Ministry of Transport to pay the ex-workers. This was on the 13th of July 2012, the same month in which Prof. Mills suddenly died in office.
“On any occasion of the commemoration of his passing, we the ex-workers feel huge sense of personal loss because if it had not been for the death, we would have long been paid and the many marriages which fell on the rocks, the homelessness and destitution that our members suffered wouldn’t have occurred,” Moshake said.
He used the occasion to call on the current Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin and President John Dramani Mahama to fulfil the plan of President Mills by seeing through the execution of Atta Mills’ fiat. “There would be no better way to honour this great man of conscience than to see through his quest for justice for the GPHA ex-workers,” Moshake said.
Meanwhile, he has profusely thanked the organizers of the memorial lecture and wreath-laying ceremony to commemorate the passing of President Mills.
Those in attendance at the colourful ceremony include President John Dramani Mahama, brilliant and hardworking Speaker Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin, Chief of Staff, Julius Debrah and the National Chairman of NDC, Johnson Asiedu Nketia.
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