GPHA Must Respect the Authority of President Akufo-Addo - Ex-workers
Leader of the over 4,000 workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) who were retrenched in 2002, but have had their severance benefits unpaid to them, has hotly replied the GPHA’s Director General of Marketing and Corporate Affairs, Esther Gyebi-Donkor.
In response to Mrs. Gyebi-Donkor’s statement dismissing the ex-workers’ recent press conference demanding payment, Mr. Stephen Ashitey Adjei, has challenged argument proffered by the top GPHA official over the matter.
“The statement that she signed and released to the public reeks of insensitivity. I think that for her sake and the sake of the organization she represents she should seek clarity from the victims,” Mr. Ashitey Adjei wrote in a statement.
The statement also described the GPHA Director General for Corporate Affairs’ claim that the ex-workers’ demand for their due, is an election period stunt, as “misplaced.”
“How can you say we are using the election season to make noise when we have been demanding our due many years ago? Or is she so uninformed that she does not even know what happens in the news?” the statement asked.
Above all, the GPHA Ex-workers’ leader pointed out that through her posture in the response, Esther Gyebi-Donkor and the GPHA are openly disrespecting the authority of President Akufo-Addo who in August 2023 directed that the ex-workers’ issue be dealt with.
“The GPHA must respect the authority of the President; if they will not respect us, at least they must respect the authority of the occupant of the highest office of the land, the office of the President,” the statement read.
Again, the statement dismissed her claim that the Supreme Court had dismissed the ex-workers’ case, saying the claim is, “untrue.”
It would be recalled that last week, the ex-workers’ leader, Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, held a press conference to reiterate the demand ex-workers have been making for their benefits since the days of former President John Agyekum Kufuor.
However, unlike in previous demands, Moshake warned that if in a month’s time, their benefits are not paid them, the over 4,000 ex-workers who are located in Accra, Ashaiman, Tema and Takoradi will hold a massive, and potentially violent demonstration against the GPHA in Tema.
“We would storm the GPHA Headquarters and Shipside in our numbers,” the leader of the group of Ex-workers said.
Moshake, after announcing this intent warned the security agents to not step foot at the demonstration or else it will be bloody given that the frustration that the ex-workers have been holding in for the past 20 years will be unleashed.
It was in response to this that Mrs. Esther Gyebi-Donkor wrote a statement in reply, making a whole lot of claims that have annoyed the ex-workers and their leader even the more.
According to Mrs. Gyebi-Donkor, the ex-workers did not deserve any money from the GPHA because they had not been employed as full-time workers at the time of their retrenchment but as part time workers.
To this, Moshake replied that it was a complete lie. “If we were not full-time workers, then why did we have a Collective Bargaining agreement that made us entitled to all that full time workers were entitled to, such as car loans, and housing loans? Spouses and children were entitled to medical care at GPHA.
“Again, if we were just part time workers, why is it that out of the over 4,000 of us, five (5) of us were paid full retrenchment benefits after the retrenchment?”
Reiterating that the woman is perhaps ignorant of what she wrote, Moshake pointed out that per the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), every worker at the Authority who works for 154 working days within a calendar year was automatically upgraded as a full-time worker.
“And so if today, Esther Gyebi-Donkor and the GPHA are telling us that we were not full-time workers who deserve proper retrenchment benefits, then they are admitting to the whole world that they were committing labour crimes against us while working there.
Some of the ex-workers had been working there for over 30 years at the time of the retrenchment. How can someone who has been working at the GPHA for more than even ten or twenty years be deemed to be a part-time staff?” he quizzed.
He pointed out that before their retrenchment, the ex-workers did the same duties that the permanent staff did and were recognized as being entitled to the conditions of service of the permanent staff including housing and car or motor loans.
“But the Management of the GPHA at the time did not give us these benefits and what is even scandalous is that they deliberately hid the CBA from us until a driver of one of the Directors, saw the CBA and smuggled a copy out for us. That was when we realized that the GPHA had been criminally depriving us of our entitlements as workers and hiding things from us so we would not demand them,” Moshake wrote.
The retrenchment exercise had been sponsored by the World Bank. Moshake accuses the Management of the time of diverting the ex-workers’ monies into their pockets and then manipulating the then leadership of the workers’ union to be silent on the matter. “This is how come even though we are over 4,000, only 5 of us were paid their full severance benefits while the over 4,000 of us have remained unpaid. We had staff numbers and were taking bonus and leave allowance every year and were covered by the CBA under Article 19.”
In her response to the ex-workers’ press conference, Esther Gyebi-Donkor had also claimed that the ex-workers’ case had been dismissed by the Supreme Court, but Moshake points out that she again exhibited her insensitivity towards the ex-workers by making that claim.
“The Supreme Court did not just dismiss our case, the bench which was headed by then Chief Justice, Theodora Georgina Wood, had lamented that the lawyer handling our case, had committed strange procedural mistakes and as a result the case had been messed up. But before she would dismiss the case over the procedural errors, Mrs. Georgina Wood had directed the GPHA to sit down with the ex-workers and negotiate terms.”
Moshake also laughed off the GPHA official’s statement that the ex-workers had been given a handshake, asking rhetorically if she wants the whole world to believe that the World Bank, which sponsored the retrenchment exercise, was so wicked as to pay an insulting Ghc66 as severance benefits for a year per a worker of the GPHA?
“If the World Bank really allocated Ghc66 per year per worker, let Esther Gyebi-Donkor and the GPHA bring it out and let us all see,” Moshake wrote, adding, “and let her explain why our other colleagues who were properly paid their benefits took between 3billion and 7 billion old cedis as their severance benefits.”
But above all, Moshake pointed out that Esther Gyebi-Donkor’s response is disrespectful to President Nana Akufo-Addo who, in August, 2023, directed the GPHA to attend to the ex-workers’ issue.
“And, His Excellency President Nana Akufo-Addo is not the only President that Esther Gyebi-Donkor and the GPHA have defied with this her brazen arrogance; they have defied the late President Mills, who earlier, in July 2012, had issued a fiat to the Ministry of Transport to pay us,” Moshake wrote.
According to him, “were it not for the fact that President Mills suddenly died in office and was succeeded by John Mahama who refused to see through the process, we would have been paid a long time ago.”
Moshake warned Esther Gyebi-Donkor to be very careful about the way she responds to the ex-workers demand because as things are, the GPHA has done enough injustice to the ex-workers already.
“Many of my colleagues have died out of frustration, some are sick and bed ridden while many more have lost families and places to lay their heads. Come to Tema, Ashaiman and Takoradi and see. But we also know that the criminals who stole our money, many of them are sick because of the natural retribution that comes with such wickedness. Esther Gyebi–Donkor is about to retire and will take several hundreds of thousands of cedis but she says we don’t deserve the little that is due us? I will urge her to tread carefully.
Infact, it is unfortunate that Mrs. Esther Gyebi-Donkor does not have a competent understanding of the matter to the level that has lowered marketing and corporate affairs managerial standards,” Moshake wrote.
Leave A Comment