Ex-GWCL employees demand tools for informal jobs

Wa, Jan. 18, GNA - Retrenched employees of the Ghana Water Company Limited in the Upper West Region have called on the government to fulfil its promise of providing them with tools and equipment to take up careers in the informal sector.

The ex-employees said when they were retrenched, they were made to sign bonds that they were not to work or seek employment in any government outfit and as a result, they would be assisted to acquire skills and supplied with tools and equipment to start their own businesses.

Four of the 47 aggrieved former GWCL workers in the Region made the call on behalf of their colleagues at the offices of the Ghana News Agency at Wa on Thursday.

They are, Mr Wilfred Dabuoh Kuunsun-nang, ex-Principal Superintendent (Electrical), Mr Ben Zinye Wanye, ex-Senior Storekeeper, Mr Alex Yaw Sutha, ex- accounts clerk grade one and Mr Kpaale Kwaku, ex-pump attendant grade one.

The aggrieved ex-employees said Innovative Services Limited, an Accra based Management and Industrial Consulting firm, which supervised the retrenchment exercise, told them that they could not be employed in the formal sector because that was the policy of the World Bank. They therefore signed the bond and accepted it in good faith with the hope that the government would also meet its obligation to enable them to get some work to do to support their families since most of them were still very young.

According to them, the consultants went round in June 2006 and made them to fill some forms in which everybody was asked to list the number of tools and materials they needed for their work with the promise that they would meet them again in December 2007 but that meeting never took place.

"We were retrenched on September 1, 2005 and up till now we have not got the tools and equipment they promised us and the consultants too are tight-lipped", Mr Kuusun-nang, spokesman for the workers said. "Anytime we contacted the Managing Director of the consulting firm to remind him of the tools and equipment, he tells us not to worry him", he added. Over one thousand workers of the Ghana Water Company Limited were retrenched in August 2005 to pave way for the restructuring of the urban water sector to make it more responsive to the increasing demand for better service delivery and to enable the company attain financial sustainability.