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Goldfields Mines to lay off 1,350 workers

By Justice Kofi Bimpeh
Goldfields Mines to lay off 1,350 workers
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Goldfields Mines will soon lay off 1,350 workers under its new contract mining arrangement.

The new contract mining arrangement at Goldfields Mines is expected to absorb about 80 – 85 percent of the current workers at the mines.

This was included in the company’s letter dated March 9, 2018, and signed by its Chief Executive Officer, Nick Holland, which was addressed to the General Secretary of the IndustriALL Global Union (IGU), Valter Sanches based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“As per an agreement between GFGL and the contractor, about 80 – 85% of these employees will be re-engaged by the contractors, under fair and equitable remuneration terms.

READ ALSO: Gun Shots: Four workers injured at Goldfields Mines

“As part of the severance package from GFGL, these employees will also benefit from three months gross salary for every year that they worked,” the company stated in the letter.

The company was responding to a letter dated March 8, 2018, from the IGU, which was headlined “Industrial Global Union calls on Goldfields to intervene at Goldfields Ghana to end violation of workers’ rights”.

The affected employees are at the company’s mining and equipment maintenance department in Tarkwa.

The company said the process leading to signing the severance package letters was carried out peacefully, and that the package was accepted by a majority of the employees who have signed the letters.

The figures, in respect of affected employees, are becoming conflicted – in that on February 14, 2018, Nick Holland in a media release announcing the company’s 2017 unaudited results, with a sub-heading ‘West Africa’, which said:

“As part of the process and in terms of the Ghanaian labour law, a retrenchment process will be initiated – though the contractor has agreed to re-employ a large number of the 1,700 affected employees”.

Also, the company’s lawyers in the recent court case brought against it by the Ghana Mine Workers Union stated that: “The total number of employees that could be affected is about 2,150”.

On Monday, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, John Peter Amewu, together with the Minister of Labour and Industrial Relations met with the Ghana Mine Workers Union (GMWU) over a protest at the Tarkwa Mine which turned bloody, with the police arresting 6 members of the union.

After the meeting, government signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the union asking it to submit all of its documents in relation to its stance on the pending redundancy by Goldfields Mines.

Peace and calm, according to the GMWU, have been restored at Tarkwa Goldfields Mines until the government, today, meets all parties involved to find a lasting solution to the stand-off.

www.primenewsghana.com/ Ghana News

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