By William
Yaw Owusu
Monday June
25, 2018
The senior and junior staff unions of the Ghana
Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) have jointly apologized profusely to their
Chairman, Peter Mac Manu, after making unfounded allegations against him
recently.
The two unions at a joint news conference at the TUC
National Headquarters in Accra, with the support of the Maritime Dockworkers
Union (MDU) of TUC on Friday, appealed passionately to Mr. Mac Manu to forgive
them because they were withdrawing “the allegations against Mr. Mac Manu in particular, his wife and sons, and
unreservedly apologise to them.”
They accused him of obtaining a contract of about GHȼ4 million to wire the
newly constructed electrical and materials block at GPHA, and facilitating a
Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project.
“He has seven companies at the ports - five
stevedore companies and two cleansing companies. He is using his position to
circumvent the procurement process in order to acquire a tug boat (Tema
Manhean); the spare parts have been procured to refurbish this tug boat,” they
alleged.
Mr. Mac Manu hit back exposing the union for what he
called their ‘lies’ and threatened to take legal action against the chairman of
the senior staff union of the authority and the members if they failed to
retract and apologise for defaming him.
He described the allegations as “highly defamatory
and toxic to his reputation, which he, as a businessman and politician, has
worked tirelessly over many decades to build.”
He even held a news conference challenging the union
members to mention the names of his children, who are major suppliers to the
authority as they claimed. He asked his solicitors to serve notice to the
leadership of the workers’ union to retract the baseless allegations and
apologise for impugning his reputation.
“As you may be aware our client has served and
continues to serve in various high-profile capacities both in private and
public service locally and internationally. Your malevolent and unwarranted
allegations have therefore caused him a great deal of reputational damage,” his
lawyers had said.
“By this letter, should you fail to meet our
client’s demands within 10 working days from the date of this letter, we have
unequivocal instructions to take all necessary legal steps, including but
limited to commencing legal action against you and the unions involved to salvage
our client’s reputation,” it added.
Unable to provide proof for the allegation, the
workers held the news conference to apologise to Mr. Mac Manu.
The statement read by John Aseeph, Chairman of the
Senior Staff Union of GPHA in Tema said, “At the press conference, we levelled
allegations against Mr. Peter Mac Manu, Chairman of the Board of Directors of
GPHA and some members of his family. We of the Union want to put it on record
that we did not call the press conference and level the allegations against the
chairman out of malice.
“As a Union and social partner with a common
objective of working together with management towards achieving the objectives
of GPHA, we had some serious concerns about the happenings in GPHA which we
were not happy about.”
They added, “After the press conference, it has come
to our notice that we did not engage management the more as we should have done
before holding the press conference.”
Mr. Aseeph said, “Some facts have come to our notice
which on hindsight, we would not have brought into the public domain against
Mr. Peter Mac Manu and his family at our press conference. We therefore
withdraw the allegations against Mr. Peter Mac Manu in particular, his wife and
sons and unreservedly apologize to them.”
He made an assurance that “nevertheless, we as a
Union with a role to protect public interest will not shirk our responsibility
as watchdogs of accountability in the governance of public institutions. We
think there must be peace and solidarity with our social partners at the
workplace to achieve our goals.”
“We are sorry for the embarrassment and
inconvenience our press might have caused Mr. Peter Mac Manu and members of his
family and once again we apologize unreservedly.”
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