Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday, May 23, 2016
The senior staff local
union of the Maritime Dockworkers Union (MDU) of PSC Tema Shipyard Limited,
which is under the Trades Union Congress (TUC), is challenging claims by the
junior staff of Shipyard Limited that it does not protect their interests and
welfare.
According to the senior
staff, it was rather their professional engagement with the management of PSC
Tema Shipyard that is helping to keep that strategic national asset afloat.
The Junior Staff Local
Union of the MDU, led by Samuel Attram and Stephen Tetteh Quaye, chairman and
secretary respectively, signed a petition last week to the presidency and all
sector heads accusing the Tema District Council of the MDU and its general
secretary, Daniel Owusu-Koranteng, of backing the CEO of Shipyard, H.R. Tunde
Ali, to remain in office.
According to the junior
staff, the only way for the shipyard to become effective is for the president
to remove the CEO and also for the facility to be handed over to the Ghana
Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA).
However, the Tema
District Council of Labour at a news conference last week debunked the claims
and backed calls for the government to use a consortium of Ghanaian-owned
companies to rescue the stricken PSC Tema Shipyard.
They said a consortium
comprising the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, Ghana National Petroleum
Corporation (GNPC) and Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) -
as recommended by a committee in 2009 - could help revive the shipyard and they
passionately appealed to the incensed junior staff to send their petition to
the presidency.
A counter petition signed
by Nicholas N. Kotey and Fuseini Shahamu-deen, secretary and chairman
respectively, said they had no doubt that H.R. Tunde Ali and the management of
the shipyard were striving to check corruption at the yard.
The senior staff said,
“Since he took over the yard, customers do not leave without making full
payments as compared to his predecessors where clients owed the company close
to $3.5 million and the board had no other option than to write it off as bad
debt.”
They said the report of
the committee of enquiry into the shortfall of revenue in PSC account on the
vessel MT Loulou in November last year as well as the Chris Ackumey report of
2010 had all served as an eye-opener for the management, which the CEO used to
the benefit of the shipyard.
They said the bonuses
that were not paid to workers last year were as a result of the financial
constraints of the yard due to a turbulent financial year.
“One can only say that
these allegations are as a result of the suffocation by the stringent security
policies introduced by the CEO, making it impossible for people with their
parochial interests to divert company assets into their personal coffers.
Illegal activities in the yard have been minimized to the barest minimum,” they claimed.
They also insisted that
MDU had been very professional in handling issues at the yard and said Mr.
Owusu-Koranteng is a man of integrity whose reputation “precedes him wherever
he goes.”
“He has always had the
plight of workers at heart and it is unfortunate that the newly-elected Junior
Staff Local Union of MDU of PSC Tema Shipyard want to bring his name to shame,”
they added.
The Senior Staff said
their juniors peddled falsehood in their petition when they said their
Collective Bargaining Agreement had not been signed since 2013.
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