Dry Xmas for GBC workers— While battle over subvention rages

29/12/10


Story: Musah Yahaya Jafaru
THE Ministry of Information and the management of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) have disagreed over the payment of the November/December subvention to the GBC.
While the GBC management claims that it has not received the November/December subvention from the Controller and Accountant-General, the Ministry of Information indicates that the subvention has been released.
As a result of the confusion, workers of GBC have not been paid their December salaries.
The Minister for Information, Mr John Tia Akologo, issued a statement last Friday stating that checks by the ministry had revealed that the November/December subvention had been released to GBC.
However, the acting Director-General of GBC, Mr Kwabena Anane Sarpong, told the Daily Graphic that the management did not have any information on the payment of the subvention.
He said the inability of the management to receive the subvention had made it difficult for it to effect payment of the December salaries of workers.
Consequently, Mr Sarpong said the GBC Board would meet today to investigate whether the Controller and Accountant General had released the money.
Meanwhile, some workers of GBC told the Daily Graphic that they were convinced that their management had received the subvention, since the government paid it quarterly.
They claimed that the management had employed about 600 workers across the country within the last three months, instead of the required 120.
They said the increased number of employees made it difficult for the management to pay all the staff on time.
The workers said December salaries were usually paid by December 18 to enable workers to do some shopping for Christmas, noting that the delayed payment had compelled some of them to contract loans.
They added that some of them could not get the loans, making their situation a bit more difficult.
The workers also blamed the GBC Local Union for siding with the management and not fighting the cause of the workers.
However, the GBC Local Union Chairman, Rev Ernest Opoku, denied that the union was supporting the management against the workers.
He wondered why the union would side with the management, given the fact that he and the other union executives had also not received their salaries.
“I have also not received my salary. We are in the same boat on the high seas,” he intimated.