Collapsed banks: Labour Minister to meet GCB over workers’ fate

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffuor Awuah says he will by next week meet the management of GCB Bank to discuss the fate of staff of the two collapsed.
The Chief Executive Officer of the GCB Bank, Raymond Sowah at a press conference on Tuesday said not all the staff of the former banks will be employed adding that even those who will be retained will still undergo a skills assessment requirement.
Meanwhile speaking on Eyewitness News on Wednesday, the Employment and Labour Relations Minister said although his outfit has not been contacted by any aggrieved worker yet, he will initiate processes to protect the workers who might be be affected by the takeover.
“I together with TUC is seeking to have an engagement with the stakeholders somewhere early next week so that we will bring all the parties to a roundtable and have a discussion as to how the affected workers are going to be dealt with or whether or not there are going to be retained by the GCB bank. If they are going off, what is the severance arrangement and what have you, we will do that arrangement somewhere next week.”
“This is just our initiative because formally, nobody has brought this issue to us. I would have expected us being involved especially even at that negotiation level so that we will get to know whether there is a fair play going on at that level.
I have the impression to believe that those negotiations were done at the local level and perhaps the parties were okay and that is why they’ve not brought it to us. But whatever it is, whether they are okay or not, we will want to know the considerations that went in,” he added.
GCB bank was on Monday given the green light to take over the two banks which according to the Bank of Ghana had “severe impairment of their capital.”
BoG further revoked the licenses while the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) also suspended the listing status of UT Bank.
“The news of the takeover came to us as a surprise. But I want to believe that the central bank decided to keep this very low profile…because they wanted to keep this whole issue in a confidential manner to avoid the run out of the bank.
I am not too worried about the number that will be retained or not, what I’m interested in is that even those who are not going to be retained, what is going to be done for them so that they will become a burden on society,” the Minister added.