The General Secretary of the Ghana Federation of Labour (GFL), Abraham Koomson, has expressed concerns about the decision by the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) to sell its hotels.
According to him, the rationale provided by SSNIT that the sale was necessary due to the underperformance of the assets and to restore profitability is inaccurate.
His comment comes after SSNIT said it was still pursuing options to divert underperforming assets following the Labour Union’s threat and agitations which forced SSNIT to abort the advance plans to sell a 60 per cent stake in some four of its hotels.
Addressing the media at the Ministry of Information, the Director-General of SSNIT, Kofi Bosompem Osafo-Maafo said there is a need to continue the evaluation of assets belonging to SSNIT to inform decision-making.
“A previous report said SSNIT will be out of business in 2025, we are still here. One report said that we will be out of business in 2034, the next one is 2036 and appears to cause a lot of alarm.”
“SSNIT has never defaulted on pension payments and I’m very confident that SSNIT will be around longer after I’m gone,” he said.
But speaking on Top Story on Wednesday, August 28, Mr Koomson revealed that SSNIT had engaged the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to assess its performance and provide advice.
He explained that ILO used its actuarial science department to conduct an assessment, which indicated that SSNIT needed to re-organise or face potential collapse by 2036.
“They requested the ILO to help them assess the performance of SSNIT and advice. ILO just didn’t write to them, they [SSNIT] made the request that they should help them so they used their actuarial science department to do some evaluation and that is how come they realised that if SSNIT does not re-organise themselves well, the scheme will collapse,” he said.
Mr Koomson argued that SSNIT is not currently making losses and questioned the need for the hotel sales if the scheme is not in immediate danger despite the ILO’s warnings.
“If they say they have survived, why did they attempt to sell the hotels? They are not making losses, these hotels are not making losses,” he said.
He also criticised President Akufo-Addo’s comments regarding the hotel sales, describing them as uncalled for.
“..He was annoyed to the fact that he was blaming the unions for embarking on the unnecessary… why should the president behave the way he did? What interest does he the President have in this whole thing? He should have rather called these SSNIT guys to order but not to attack the union,” he stressed.
Source: myjoyonline