Solomon Kotei (second left), Diana Bosuh (right) with some senior staff of Times heading for a closed-door meeting before addressing the entire workforce
STAFF OF New Times Corporation, publishers of Ghanaian Times newspaper, yesterday embarked on a nationwide protest over what they termed ‘poor working conditions and low remunerations.’
This culminated in the managing director of New Times Corporation – a state-owned publishing company – Carol Annang, being denied entry into the premises of the company in the early hours of the day.
The agitating workers, clad in red cloths, took the MD by surprise as they drove her away and told her never to return there again.
According to some of the workers who spoke to DAILY GUIDE on condition of anonymity, the MD had for the past nine months refused to heed their call for a 20 percent increment of their salaries.
They also reported that the company, under Madam Annang, had for no concrete reason, seized the payment of workers’ provident funds, leave allowances, healthcare benefits, among others.
“We can’t live on our salaries for a week, poor condition of service,” Chairperson for Professional and Managerial Staff Union of the Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union (ICU), Diana Bosuh, said in an interview with DAILY GUIDE on the sidelines of the protest at the head office of Times Corporation in Accra.
It took the intervention of the President of the Ghana Journalists’ Association (GJA), Affail Monney and General Secretary of ICU, Solomon Kotei, to calm down the nerves of the workers before the got back to work.
ICU Backs Workers
Mr. Kotei was of the opinion that the protest could have been avoided if the MD had chosen to listen to the concerns of the staff.
“We will not sit down and allow one person to come and see the demise of this great institution; what we see as the mismanagement is for us to have a big company like Times and we have only two products. Besides the Times and Spectator, nothing is left for us again. Other businesses that we get even through government agencies have also died down,” Mr. Kotei lamented, adding that to worsen the situation, the MD had decided to give the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) the contract to print Ghanaian Times daily at a whopping cost of about GH¢17,000.
That, he said, was unthinkable, considering the fact that GCGL is a rival of Times Corporation; and also looking at the low patronage of Ghanaian Times in recent years, that amount is too huge to be given out to another company when Times could find ways of doing its own printing in order to minimize cost.
According to Mr. Kotei, salaries of workers had been in arrears for several years and that their basic pay is among the lowest in the country.
In the midst of that, management is paying its members a total of eleven different allowances and buying themselves vehicles, Mr. Kotei said.
“We are here this morning to encourage all of us that it is not because of these people Times will die off; we shall resume work and we shall ensure that she (MD) will not step her foot back into this company,” Mr. Kotei said, amid applause and chants from the workers.
He alleged that the MD had assumed the roles of procurement manager, chief accountant, general administrator, among others.
DAILY GUIDE could not readily reach the embattled MD for her side of the story as she was not available at the time of filing this report.
BY Melvin Tarlue