Ghana Ports staff union executives face sanctions

The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) is considering punishing executives of the Junior and Senior Staff Union of the Authority for organizing an unauthorized press conference to level allegations against the Board Chairman, Peter Mac Manu.

The executives reportedly breached Article 14 and 28 of Collective Agreement of GPHA when they fabricated stories to tarnish the image of the Board Chairman, GPHA, government and his family at large.

It was also established that they travelled to the Takoradi Port to hold the press conference without authorization from management.

Management of GPHA has called for one-month suspension without pay to serve as deterrent to all staff.

Although the workers have publicly retracted and apologized for making the allegations on May 22, 2018, against the Board Chairman and his family, management of the Authority believes punishing them severely would ensure sanity in the organization.

Queries were earlier issued to the workers, but they claimed they took the action in the name of the union so they should be redirected to the union.

Management believes in order to put a stop to the untoward behaviour, the executives of both the Senior Staff Union and the Junior Staff Union should be punished in accordance with the Collective Agreement.

Meanwhile, the Shop Stewards of GHPA have also passed a resolution for the dissolution of the union.

They asked the executives of the union to step down with immediate effect because they had lost trust in them.

According to a letter signed by Emmanuel Arhin, Chief Shop Steward of Tema and Takoradi Ports, several vessels moved to different countries due to the red flags used by the workers during the press conference.

“Because they disgraced GPHA workers and the country as a whole, these negative events have brought the name of GPHA into disrepute.

“It’s against this background that we, the shop floor executives, are appealing to management to suspend them because we have lost trust in the current executives.

“We are again demanding that the union office should be closed down and the keys handed over to the Port Security Manager. “We also urge them to park the union buses and suspend our activities temporarily till further notice,” the statement said.

They also asked the executives to explain how an amount of GH¢90,000 got into the custody of the union.