No pay, no work demo hits Primewood
Workers of Ghana Primewood Products Limited, one of Ghana's leading Timber firms in Takoradi since 1968, have demonstrated over the non-payment of their three months salary arrears.
The workers have accused management of mismanaging revenue hence their inability to operate the company efficiently.
When Maxx News arrived at the company's premises on Monday, the angry workers were burning car tyres at an open space in front of the administration block.
A few of them, mostly the youth, chanted war songs and wielded placards, some of which read, “we need our three months arrears”, “we need positive change”, “no pay, no work”.
Not even the presence of police officers from the Western Regional Headquarters deterred the irate workers from setting tyres ablaze on the premises.
According to them, they have been working tirelessly whilst the company exports its products and yet fails to pay their meagre salaries. They accused management of mismanaging the revenue generated hence their inability to pay the workers and run the company efficiently.
“We come to work every day and for three months, we are not able to give our wives housekeeping money,” an aggrieved worker said.
“A worker has suffered divorce because he can't take care of the home and pay his children's school fees and some of us our wives don't even allow us to touch them at night,” a thirty-five year old worker lamented.
However the Lebanese General Manager of the Freezones company solely owned by a Ghanaian Timber Magnate has denied the workers' allegations.
Roger Holou told Max News the company is in difficult times because it is not able to raise letters of credit from banks to run affairs.
Addressing the agitated workers, Mr. Holou urged them to remain calm and return to work while he negotiates with his foreign buyers who have pledged to raise letters of credits (LCs) to support the company.
The Human Resource Manager of the Company, Emmanuel Alhassan told Maxx News that it had become extremely challenging to operate a timber industry in recent times because cost of production has gone up whilst prices are stagnant.
“Our products are always exported to Europe and since this is a freezone company, about 98 percent of our produce are exported. And you can imagine paying a workforce of about 1,200. The wage bill will be over 1.4 billion. At first when we ship our items, it passes through the banks and we collect overdraft to pay the workers, and then when the Letters of Credit and the money comes, it passes through the banks for them to do their deductions and then we take the balance so we didn't find problems to pay the workers”.
“But the Credit crunch in Europe affected us because we deal directly with them. The Customers could not come down to buy because they had no monies in the banks. So the banks here refused to give us credits or overdrafts,” he explained.
After a brief meeting with representatives of the workers, the workers have now agreed to return to work beginning from tomorrow after the management reached an agreement with the Local Workers Union to pay the all the arrears for the over 1,000 workers in three weeks time.
Mr. Alhassan said the company is putting in place measures to ensure that the company does not find itself in this situation again after this hurdle is crossed.