Ignatius Baffour Awuah, Minister for Employment and Labour Relations
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Aug 18, 2017

The Employment and Labour Relations Minister, Ignatius Baffuor Awuah, has initiated moves towards securing appropriate severance packages for the workers of the defunct UT and Capital banks, who would be affected by a layoff yet to be announced by their new management, GBC Bank.

According to the Minister, he would hold meetings with the relevant stakeholders including the management of the GCB Bank and the Trade Union Congress to discuss the fate of 990 staff of the two defunct banks.

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“The objective is to ensure that the workers are not short-changed,” he said on Thursday in Accra.

“I together with TUC is seeking to have an engagement with the stakeholders somewhere early next week so that we will bring all the parties to a roundtable and have a discussion as to how the affected workers are going to be dealt with, whether or not they are going to be retained by GCB bank. If they are going off, what is the severance arrangement made for them,” Mr. Baffour Awuah said.

After taking over the assets and liabilities of the two deeply insolvent banks whose licences were revoked on Monday by the central bank, the management of GCB bank is undertaking a right-sizing exercise which it says would result in a layoff of a section of the inherited staff.

The exercise has created uncertainty among the staff who are afraid of losing their jobs, and experts have urged the workers who would be affected to seek the help of labour consultants to help them negotiate their severance benefits.

But the Labour Minister says the Ministry would intervene where necessary for the benefit of the affected workers.

“I am not so worried about the number that will be retained or not, what I’m interested in is that for those who will not be retained, what will be done for them so they do not become a burden on the society.

“This is just our initiative because formally, nobody has brought this issue to us. I would have expected us to be involved especially at that negotiation level so that we would get to know whether there was a fair play or not. I have the impression to believe that those negotiations were done at the local level and perhaps the parties were okay and that is why they have not brought it to us. But whatever it is, whether they are okay or not, we will want to know the considerations that went in,” he said.

By Francis Tandoh/adrdaily.com

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