[ 2012-08-16 ]

CMC Staff On Red Alert
Employees of the Cocoa Marketing Company (CMC)
Limited have been angered by a decision by the
board and management of Ghana Cocoa Board
(COCOBOD) to decouple the Warehousing and Port
Operations (WPO) from the CMC.

They have vowed to resist the move.
The CMC union has described the attempt to hive
off the WPO from the CMC as an attempt to weaken
the CMC front. They also fear some staff would be
laid off under what they described as
‘restructuring of the WPO’.

According to an executive summary on the
restructuring of the CMC which was made available
to graphic.com.gh, decoupling the CMC, would
enable it to focus on its core functions.

In the view of COCOBOD the activities of the WPO
would be increased tremendously, making it a
bigger division, when it is hived off from CMC.

But the Senior Staff Association (SSA) and the
employee union of the Industrial and Commercial
Workers Union (ICU) of the Trades Union Congress
at the CMC have kicked against the intended move,
arguing that there was no basis for the COCOBOD
management and the board to take such a decision
and without recourse to them.

The Supreme Vice Chairman of the union, Mr Iddris
Hassan, impressed upon a gathering of the staff at
a meeting in Accra on Wednesday, to resist any
attempt to hive off the WPO from the CMC, stating
that such a move could have dire consequences for
their job security.

According to the executive summary, the
restructured CMC would be made up of the Trading
(Marketing) and Shipping/Documentation departments
forming the core of the CMC with a skeletal
auxiliary staff from other departments joining
them.

To ensure that management does not succeed in its
plan, the leadership of the union are to hold
series of meetings with other staff of the CMC in
Kumasi and Takoradi to win their support against
any attempt to decouple the WPO from the CMC.

The leadership has already engaged CMC staff on
the same issue in Tema.

According to Mr Hassan, meeting the other staff of
the CMC was primarily to solicit their views and
chart a way forward towards ensuring that the
interest of the employees were protected,
contending that what the management of COCOBOD
could have done, was rather to resource and
modernise the CMC and not to weaken it.

He served notice that the union would petition the
Minister of Finance and Economic Planning to
intervene in the matter.

Staff who took turns to speak to the issue pledged
their collective support to the union in its quest
to make management rescind its decision.

Mr Hassan advised the employees to take principled
positions as far as the issue was concerned rather
than to waver in the face of intimation and other
forms of harassment from management of the board.

Some of the aggrieved employees who spoke to
graphic.com.gh on condition of anonymity have
threatened to hit the streets to protest if
management pursued its intended decision.

Other executive members of the ICU present at the
meeting were Mr Timothy Jobson Mitchael, Chairman
of the SSA, Mr Kojo Instsiful, National Union
Chairman and Mr Ken Augusst, the Supreme Chairman.

Source - Daily Graphic

... go Back