The General Secretary of the Ghana Federation of Labour, Abraham Koomson, has asked the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) not to sell off a 60% stake in four hotels.
According to him, SSNIT has no justification to sell off the state assets, especially when they are not under any financial stress.
“SSNIT will not sell the hotels and nobody will buy them because if it is about capital, SSNIT is not in financial distress and has no challenges with money.
“Employers pay monthly contributions and if they default, they are dragged to court and made to pay penalties. So if there are real issues that have accounted for the move, SSNIT should come out and tell us,” he stated.
The Director General of SSNIT, Kofi Bosompem Osafo-Maafo, at a press conference on Monday July 8, 2024 insisted that all the hotels put up for sale have recorded consistent losses.
According to him, the majority of the hotels are not paying dividends, and selling them was the only option to revive the hotels.
However, Mr Koomson on Adom FM’s morning show Dwaso Nsem Tuesday disagreed with Mr Osafo-Maafo’s claims of bad management of the hotels.
He emphasised that if the management were competent, the institution would not be incurring such significant losses.
“If they are talking about mismanagement, then I will agree that the people are not doing their work well and they will need to change them. You don’t cut your head off if you have a headache, you go in for proper medication so if they are making losses, then it means the managers are not doing well,” he stated.
Mr Koomson added that, hotel business is not bad, noting private people are making it and cannot fathom the cause of the losses been incurred.
“They should not sell the hotels to anyone they should just get qualified and competent people to run the place; set targets for them because selling the hotels is not the solution,” he stressed.
ALSO READ: