TEMA WORKERS SHOW SOLIDARITY WITH TOR (SPREAD, MAY 12, 2010)

A section of workers in Tema yesterday staged a demonstration to add their voices to calls being made by their counterparts at the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) on the government to address the problems facing the refinery.
Wearing red armbands, the workers, drawn from various companies under the umbrella of the Tema District Council of Labour (TDCL), carried placards and marched through some principal streets of the metropolis.
Some of the placards read, “Free TOR from GNPC now”, “Tolling can’t pay TOR workers”, “Dr Ampofo is gone, Dr Oteng–Adjei must follow”, “TOR is not for the Ahwois”, “We need our own crude oil”, “Mr President, when are you taking over shipyard completely?”
In a resolution to the President, signed on behalf of the workers by the Chairman of the TDCL, Mr Wilson Agana, and the Secretary, Mr Ebenezer Kodwo Taylor, the workers expressed concern over developments at TOR which, in their view, could result in the collapse of such an important national asset as the refinery.
It explained that the demonstration was primarily an appeal to the Office of the President to rescind its decision to make TOR a tolling facility.
It said TOR faced imminent collapse if those challenges were not confronted and addressed in the national interest.
It called on the government to give the TOR management the free hand to manage the refinery to forestall the erratic supply of crude oil to the plant.
It commended the government for the recent payment made to defray TOR’s indebtedness to the Ghana Commercial Bank and called on it to make every effort to pay outstanding debts of the refinery to enable it to establish letters of credit to facilitate its smooth operations.
The statement called on the government to immediately go to the aid of the refinery and help to settle the crippling debts it owed to institutions such as the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), the Provident Fund, the Internal Revenue Service and the Ghana Trades Union Congress (TUC).
It called for investigations into the TOR recovery levy receipts and application and subsequently bring to book those who might have misused the levy.
It advised the government to apply the levy for the purposes for which it was established.
Earlier, the Chairman of the local union, Mr Albert Pinto, had described as uneconomical the decision by the government to negotiate for one million barrels of crude annually to feed the refinery.
He said the refinery was able to process 45,000 barrels a day per its installed capacity and it was, therefore, expected that the negotiations would have covered about 65,000 barrels a day to cater for the Volta River Authority (VRA) thermal plant.
He saw the negotiations that went into the one million barrels as unfortunate and a joke on the capacity of the refinery.
On May 5 , 2010, workers of TOR, in reaction to the removal of their Managing Director, Dr Kwame Ampofo, said the action would not solve the problems of the refinery.
They were of the view that the removal of the managing director would not necessarily solve the problems of TOR but pointed out that the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) was the problem.
Mr Pinto told the Daily Graphic that the refinery was processing the last bit of the crude oil sent for tolling at the plant, noting that the processing would be completed by next week Saturday and that no crude oil was expected from GNPC after the processing.
He said the workers were preparing to submit a petition to the government, through Parliament, to explain its stance on the problems coming up at TOR.