There will be no collective severance package paid to all 6,500 workers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) ahead of the privatisation of the state-owned utility company, Energy Minister, Boakye Agyarko, has said.
Anyone who voluntarily decides to leave ECG, Mr Agyarko says, will be given his due severance package but will effectively not be part of the new company after the privatisation process is done.
His comments at a press conference organised in Accra on Wednesday, 27 September were in response to a demonstration by the Public Utilities Workers Union (PUWU) on Tuesday to demand that its members with ECG be paid their severance package before they take part in the privatisation process.
Mr Boakye, however, clarified to the workers that: “If you decide to leave ECG, then you will be paid your severance but you should not have the expectation or the guarantee that the new company will take you on.”
He continued: “You have made a decision to sever your relations with ECG and it should not put you in a faithful expectation that going forward you have a job. …So all ECG workers who want to leave and not join the new company are at liberty to do so and their severance so arranged.
“But it is not going to be a collective bargaining situation where all ECG workers – 6,500 of them – are paid a severance and then transferred to the new company.
“You are at liberty to transfer yourself to NewCo and carry with you all your benefits from ECG and continue accruing new benefits; equally at liberty to say that I want to wash my hands of ECG and go my merry way.”
Source:Ghana/AccraFM.com
