Shipyard workers want contract with Malaysians abrogated

Workers of the PSC Tema Shipyard have called on the government to review the contract between Ghana and the Business Focus Group of Malaysia for the management of the shipyard.

They said for the four and half years that the Malaysians have been steering the affairs of the shipyard, there has been no progress and the yard has sunk fast indicating that the Malaysian Management has failed.

The call was contained in a resolution jointly passed by the Senior Staff Association and the Local Union's Joint Consultative Committee of the shipyard at Tema on Tuesday.

The shipyard was divested in 1997 with the Business Focus Group of Malaysia acquiring 60 per cent shares at the cost of 4.2 million dollars and the government maintaining the rest.

They said the capitalisation problem of the yard, which was the reason for divesting the establishment, has not been addressed.

The company still lacked resources to purchase basic equipment to compete globally. Age has seriously affected current plant and machinery and the 37 years old single dewatering pump has intermittently shown signs of failure.

The resolution also expressed concern about the non-existence of business plan for the yard to show what was to be done and any reviews that could be made. Rather the shipyard was run on ad-hoc basis.

They also accused the Management of being unable to formulate policies but always held operational meetings for buying directly for projects.

Stock piling has also been abandoned leading to high cost of purchases, which deter customers.

The resolution said, "inability to address the problems of customers, workers and distrust of Ghanaian Managers, placement of square pegs in round holes as sectional heads and the divide and rule policies have killed the morale of workers".

The workers noted that the flexible divestiture policies of the Divestiture Implementation Committee (DIC) and the Ghana Investment Centre resulted in the sale of the yard cheaply to the Malaysians.

They called on President John A. Kufuor, who has demonstrated his zero tolerance for corruption to also demonstrate what they called zero tolerance for non-performing investors in Ghana and cited the shipyard as an example.

The workers in 1999 made a similar appeal to the then NDC government, which resulted in the replacement of the Managing Director of the company.