Banks collapse: Laid off workers will survive – Toma Imihere

The editor of the Financial Post newspaper, Toma Imihere, is optimistic the banking professionals, who will be casualties of the collapse of the Capital and UT banks will land on their feet.

The growing financial industry is ripe to absorb the staff that will be laid off, Mr. Imihere said on The Big Issue.

The top-level management of the two collapsed banks will certainly lose their jobs but it is unclear the fate of the other workers, numbering close to 2,000.

Indications are that negotiations are in place to protect those who wish to work for GCB Bank, which stepped in to assume the assets and liabilities of the distressed banks.

GCB Bank has said it will undertake a skills assessment of the staff to determine staff should be retained or laid off as part of a six-month probation.

When it is all said and done, it is expected that at least a quarter of workers of both banks will be absorbed while the remaining are likely to lose their jobs.

But, Mr. Imihere said these job losses fit seamlessly into the already existing high corporate mortality rate in Ghana.

“Don’t cry for those 75 percent [who lose their jobs] because they are going to get jobs. Ghana's financial industry is growing at a faster rate than ever before. This year we have had licences for about four new banks which are looking for people to man the branches they are opening.”

These new banks would ultimately prefer personnel with experience in the banking sector already, he added.

“If you are a construction bank which has just opened and you want to open a new branch, where is the first place you will go to? Rather than training a fresh Legon graduate from the scratch, you would go and find someone from UT Bank or Capital Bank as long as he has not been tainted by all this.”

“The staff basically will be safe, apart from those who are found to have been guilty of professional misconduct, they will all get jobs within a very very quick time,” Mr. Imihere concluded.

–
By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana