An Accra High Court has dismissed an injunction application by the Ghana Mineworkers Union (GMWU) to prevent Goldfields Ghana Limited from executing a redundancy plan in which over 1,500 workers would be sent home.
According to the Accra High Labour Court, presided over by Justice Laurenda Owusu, the mining company risks losing more if the court halted the redundancy exercise before a determination of the substantive matter on whether they acted within law.
In the writ, the workers are praying the court to restrain Goldfields from going ahead with the intended redundancy exercise until all the stakeholders were involved.
They are also seeking a declaration from the court that the redundancy exercise is “unlawful” because the reasons given by the mining giant to lay them off do not meet the “requirements, conditions or grounds for redundancy, as provided by Section 65 of the Labour Act, 2013, Act 651.”
The workers further want the court to declare that the purported authorisation of the redundancy exercise by the Chief Labour Officer as “illegal, unlawful and null and void.”
Goldfields Ghana Limited in December 2017 announced that it will have to lay off some 1,500 workers at its Tarkwa mine.
The move also followed plans by Goldfields to shift from owner mining to contract mining.
The mining firm argued that the latter is more cost efficient compared to the former practice.
By ADR Daily Newsdesk