The lay off was deemed necessary because it has 3,600 workers operating a fleet of 430 buses currently on the road.

[contextly_sidebar id=”pHQn98ja9Ylg651wyKSPVZWIsrRz7R5v”]But the cost of laying off those workers will be much higher than simply maintaining them on the company’s wage bill.

The Board Chairman of the MMT, Ahmed Arthur, in an interview with the Daily Graphic noted that “it’s a difficult enterprise to keep the huge number of workers to operate only 430 buses”.

“It’s a delicate balance for us to keep that number of workers with few buses, and still be able to stay afloat…When we worked out the figures for laying off 1,200 workers, we realized that the figures were too huge and so we had to discard the idea of retrenchment,” he said to the paper.

Currently, the MMT makes a daily revenue of GH¢220,000 from the 430 buses in operation.

Mr. Arthur explained that, “with 3,600 workers operating 430 buses, it will mean that, on the average, each bus will be assigned, seven workers. We have to live with this number until we are able to acquire more buses so that we can have an optimum workforce.”

320 buses off-road

The MMT is said to have 750 buses, but 320 of them have broken down, leaving 430 on the road.

The government in July 2017, indicated that, it would soon purchase 800 new buses for the Metro Mass Transit and Inter-City State Transport Corporation (ISCT).

The buses will operate on compressed natural gas, while the 600 others will operate on diesel.

In September, workers of the company left many passengers stranded when they refused to work in protest of poor working conditions, and the management’s inability to fix challenges the company has been grappling with.

The workers also highlighted the new board’s decision to purchase a new vehicle for the Managing Director at GH¢100,000, when about 100 buses of the company needed urgent repair.

Mr. Arthur, in an earlier interview with Citi News, however refuted claims that the management of the MMT was working in its selfish interests, despite the company’s dwindling fortunes.

He also denied that his outfit was paying the workers although they were redundant, due to reduced operational capacity, noting that the company had plans to purchase some more buses to boost its operations, and the workers will be needed to man the new buses.

He said the company expects 200 more buses by December 2017 to bolster its fleet.

–

By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana

The post Keeping redundant workers cheaper for MMT – Board Chair appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.

The women, who all live in Italy, described the “devastating suffering” caused by the church’s ban on priests having sex and marrying.

“We love these men and they love us,” they said in their letter published on the authoritative website Vatican Insider.

“With humility, we place at your feet our suffering so that something can change, not just for us but for the good of the whole Church,” they added in the message, signed with their first names and an initial of their last names, but with several phone numbers.

Priestly celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church, while not a unchangeable dogma, is a tradition going back more than 1,000 years.

In recent decades the Vatican has come under pressure to make celibacy optional and allow priests to marry, with supporters saying that this would help ease the acute shortage of priests in many areas.

The women asked the pope to “bless our love,” adding that few people could understand the “devastating suffering lived by a woman who has a strong love for a priest”.

The Church teaches that a priest should dedicate himself totally to his vocation, essentially taking the Church as his spouse, in order to help fulfil its mission.

But the women told the pope that their men would be able to serve the Church “with greater passion” if they were supported by a woman who loves them and children.

This was far better for the priests and the Church, they argued in the letter sent to the Vatican, than “a life of continued clandestineness, with the frustration of a love that is not complete”.

The women asked to meet the pope to explain the plight “tearing apart our souls” because the couples were faced with the alternatives of either the men leaving the priesthood or carrying on the relationships in secret.

Proponents of optional celibacy in the Church have linked the sexual abuse of children by priests to its celibacy rule, saying that it could stem from sexual frustrations.

But the Church has rejected this argument, saying that paedophilia, whether in the Church or outside of it, is carried out by people with psychological problems.

Priests are allowed to marry in the Anglican and other Protestant churches as well as in the Orthodox Church.

Source: Reuters.com

The post Make celibacy optional – Women in love with Priests appeared first on Citi 97.3 FM - Relevant Radio. Always.