‘All-die-be-die’ Demo Hits GPHA From September 2
Count-down has begun towards September 2, 2024, when over four thousand ex-workers of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority who were retrenched without their severance benefits 21 years ago, will face-off with GPHA.
A planned demonstration cum picketing, in which the ex-workers will occupy the premises of the GPHA in Tema, has already been communicated to President Akufo-Addo with an appeal that the President restrain the Police and the military from intervening so that the full measure of the anger of the cheated ex-workers will be vented on the Authority.
The communication to the Presidency is in the form of a notice titled: “All Die Be Die demonstration against GPHA.” Signed by the ex-workers’ leader, Stephen Ashitey Adjei, alias Moshake, the notice updated the President about GPHA’s year-long refusal to pay the ex-workers their severance benefits in spite of a directive from His Excellency in August 2023.
“Since you directed the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority to give us our Severance benefits as far back as August last year, nothing has been heard from GPHA and our Legal team.
“We have decided to organize a massive “All Die Be Die” demonstration at the GPHA Headquarters and Ship-side in Tema on the 2nd September, 2024,” the notice stated before imploring the President to stay the Police and the Military from intervening.
Informing the President of the mobilization of the over 4,000 ex-workers from Tema and Takoradi, Mr. Ashitey Adjei clarified that “the intention is not to cause disaffection for your good government but rather to demonstrate dislike for the disrespect for your authority as President.
“GPHA is married to delay tactics and management of the company did the same thing under your friend at the University of Ghana, late President John Evans Atta Mills.
Attached is evidence and if the current management thinks that history will repeat itself for ex-President John Mahama to come and stop the payment again, then they are deceiving themselves because God doesn’t close His eyes to wickedness.”
It would be recalled that two weeks ago, Mr. Ashitey Adjei had addressed a press conference in which he had given GPHA a one-month ultimatum to comply with President Akufo-Addo’s directive to the Authority, issued in August 2023, to pay the ex-workers their severance benefits or incur a demonstration.
Almost a month after the ultimatum, the GPHA has notoriously refused to comply. This is the same GPHA which refused to comply with a July 2012 directive by late former President Mills to the GPHA and its sector Ministry, the Ministry of Transport, to sort out the ex-workers’ issue.
The over 4,000 ex-workers were retrenched in an exercise funded by the World Bank in 2002. However, the GPHA paid only five of the ex-workers and abandoned the remainder of the over 4,000.
As a result of the deprivation, many of the ex-workers have become destitute, marooned in poverty that they did not bring upon themselves.
It was in quest of justice that the ex-workers wrote to former President Mills in 2012 for justice. The late President Mills would issue direct instruction to the GPHA and the Transport Ministry to sort the ex-workers out.
However, not too long after issuing the fiat, President Mills would suddenly die in office. His successor, John Mahama would abandon the process, until President Akufo-Addo, who succeeded Mahama in 2017, would respond to the ex-workers appeal and direct the GPHA to sort the issue out in August 2023.
Since that presidential directive however, the GPHA has notoriously refused to comply, forcing the ex-workers to decide on a demonstration.
“Out of frustration and poverty due to GPHA’s delay tactics, some ex-workers’ wives are into prostitution to feed themselves and their families. If the ex-workers decide to go into armed robbery and target GPHA top officials including Board Members, former directors and mainstream politicians, whose fault is it?” the notice to the President asked rhetorically.
It reiterated that “Five people have been paid and the rest of us have not been paid, GPHA does not even need an order from the Office of the President because law is common sense. If we beat the Police and the Military and throw them into the sea on the day of demonstration, whose fault is it?
“I have always said that doing what is right appeals to the better nature in all of us and that is why universities all over the world are putting ethic courses in their curriculum to help students discern right from wrong,” Mr. Ashitey Adjei’s letter read.
The statement blessed President Akufo-Addo for his show of concern and Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon. Alban Sumana Kingsford Bagbin as well, who was also copied the letter.
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