COTTON COMPANY WORKERS WANT MANAGEMENT OUT (PAGE 51, NOV 8, 2010)

WORKERS of the distressed Ghana Cotton Company Limited (GCCL) in Tamale, Tumu and Bolgatanga, have called for the dismissal of the current management of the company.
They accused the management of mismanaging the resources of the company, thereby collapsing it.
They, therefore, entreated the government to, as a matter of urgency, salvage the distressed company by appointing a new board of directors and a substantive managing director as part of measures to revamp it.
The workers stated this in a 11-point petition presented to the media in Tamale by Mr Raphael Zuanah, the chairman of the local union.
The workers alleged that the management had “illegally adjusted their respective salaries upward leaving the rest of the workers, thereby distorting the whole salary structure”.
They further stated that the management “procured expired and relabelled insecticides that had resulted in poor production and drained the company’s resources”.
They also claimed the management used borrowed monies meant for the company’s operations to “sponsor top management staff to undertake their executive Masters Programme at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), although most of them were due for retirement”.
“Car loans were given to about 11 management staff members at a time when the company was in financial crisis. They have also converted their leave into huge sums of money when they could not pay staff,” the workers alleged.
The workers were of the view that it was not necessary for the company to increase its management staff from 11 to 22 with huge salaries being paid to them, which could pay the rest of the staff.
A letter written and signed by the acting Managing Director of the company, Mr George Osieku, and copied to the local union chairman, senior staff, manager, corporate affairs and the General Secretary of the General Agricultural Workers’ Union (GAWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) admitted that the company was in financial crisis.
The letter, dated October 21, 2010, also acknowledged that “salaries have been unpaid for an unprecedented six months and as such the company is heavily indebted to customers for services rendered and supplies made to it”.
According to management, it had secured GH¢1 million from the Ministry of Finance, which had already been disbursed for the payment of the outstanding six months’ salaries.
The management, therefore, advised workers to exercise restraint “as any industrial disharmony throws all efforts at securing funds out of gear and scare potential investors”.
The Daily Graphic also gathered that Chemico Limited, one of the companies that the cotton firm was indebted to, had filed a writ at the Accra High Court to place an injunction on both movable and immovable properties of the firm to compel it to honour its indebtedness.