Government is urging the striking workers at Ghana’s Jubilee field in the Western Region to return to work.
Work on Wednesday was halted at Ghana’s Jubilee field in the region because the Ghanaian workers operating the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah embarked on a strike to protest what they describe as poor working conditions.
They claim MODEC Ghana Limited, the private company managing the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah, pays expatriates workers more than the Ghanaian workers.
[contextly_sidebar id=”ZBfOjtukMDcohNnE2BRJeWAlGcTBXbeX”]But speaking speaking on the Eye Witness News on Wednesday, the communications consultant at the Energy Ministry, Edward Bawa said because the company involved is a private one, government cannot impose any directive on them.
He said, “there is no way you can just get up like Tarzan jumping into an industry and start saying that you are the employer start paying this person X amount of money. The only way we can do is to create a platform for the two of you to start negotiating on these things.”
He added that government established the Petroleum Commission to ensure that such grievances were solved.
Mr. Bawa also indicated that the only thing government can do now “is to encourage the employer, encourage the employee to sit down and talk because at the end of the day if you lay down your tools you will still end up around the table to discuss.”
“…For us, our interest is to ensure that these workers whose contribution is very valuable. We want to see them to work because we need the oil, we need to export the oil, and we need to get the revenues to be able to meet the critical social interventions which the government seeks to achieve,” Bawa said.
Meanwhile, workers of the Africa Oilfield Services Limited, a provider in Takoradi on May 31 2014, also embarked on a similar strike action.
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh/citifmonline.com