Business News of Tuesday, 5 July 2005
Source: Palaver
The Pioneer Food Cannery (PFC) Limited, formerly Tema Food Complex Corporation (TFCC), one of the flagship industrial giants of Kwame Nkrumah?s CPP Government, is to close down, and that?s official!
This is contained in the Cabinet Memorandum authored by Senior Minister J. H. Mensah in his capacity as Chairman of the Oversight Committee of Cabinet, the latest bureaucracy created by the Kufuor Government even in the face of the criticism in the APRM Report of an over-bloated government.
If the Cabinet Memorandum referred to sounds familiar, you are right. It is the same Cabinet Memorandum reporting the first meeting of the Oversight Committee of Cabinet whose possession by veteran journalist Kwesi Pratt Jnr led to a visitation to him by personnel of the CID to try to find out from him how he obtained the document. Of course Kwesi Pratt told them exactly what he thought of their mission and who they should be questioning if they had problems with leakage of official documents.
The J. H. Mensah Memorandum notes that the overall labour situation in the country contained undercurrents of disaffection. It then touched on the specific case of PFC and reported that Heinz International, owners of PFC, had decided to pull out completely from the frozen and sea food business, a decision which would lead to the closure of PFC.
In a most bizarre attempt at resolving a labour crisis of this nature, the J. H. Mensah Committee reported that it had decided to engage Heinz and the workers in dialogue to assess whether the workers would be willing to take "less" benefits in order to save jobs and the factory.
Nothing is said about engaging the management to see if they would agree to cut down on their salaries, perks and fringe benefits.
Nothing is said about engaging the owners to see if they would agree to cut down on corporate profits and shareholders? dividends.
Nothing is said about the Government reviewing the costs of fuel, electricity, water, telephone and other production costs in order to reduce costs and save jobs and the factory.
It is the workers who must agree to take "less" in order to save jobs and the factory.
A Labour consultant consulted by ?Ghana Palaver? simply said by way of comment: "This is resolving labour disputes, NPP style!"