“The current phenomenon where aspects of the mining business/jobs are farmed out at the least opportunity under cut-throat contract prices simply on the back of profit maximisation must stop since this arrangement continuous to threaten and undermine the decent work agenda and impover­ish our members,” Abdul-Moom­in Gbana, General Secretary of GMWU has said.

In a speech read on his behalf by Mr Jerry Andoh, Deputy Gen­eral Secretary of GMWU, at the opening of the Union’s national executive council meeting held at Tarkwa yesterday, he said “this continuous to happen at a time when the prevailing business envi­ronment is super favourable with gold price hitting the roof, and should have reflected in the total wellbeing of the enterprise. Un­fortunately, this is not the case”

Mr Gbana said whilst the union acknowledged that there were certain aspects of the mining business that were considered ancillary or non-core and could generally be farmed out but certainly not the core business for which a company was registered to perform.

“Unfortunately, under the guise of local content, these exploitative strategies continuous to be pursued with impunity. As a trade union, we take an un­compromising opposition to the current arrangement and there­fore reinforce our position that mining companies must be strictly responsible for the core business of mining including associated employees’ cost, and therefore should not be allowed to farm out the core business that they have a responsibility and obligation un­der the law to perform,” he said.

The union, Mr Gbana said disagreed with the emerging arrangement in the name of local content adding that” it is import­ant to highlight the ills perpetrat­ed by this arrangement and to call the attention of all actors within the mining space particularly gov­ernment to take a special interest as this has serious ramifications for the stability of the mining industry going forward.”

“As a union, we believe that it is not enough for the government to just intervene in the mining space by regulating that certain aspects of the mining value chain like mining and hauling should be left for local entities as part of local content within the sector. In fact, it is equally important that government takes keen interest in ensuring that the contracts these local entities enter with these large-scale multinational companies are not, exploitative, cut-throat and suffocating since that is the current situation on the ground,” he said.

Mr Gbana said it was import­ant for the government to pay attention because of the capi­tal-intensive nature of mining and challenges associated with access to, and the high cost of credit in Ghana for most of these local entities.

“The consequences of these cut-throat and suffocating con­tract rates are dire, as workers welfare in these local entities are relegated to the background and this is manifested in the excessive delays in payment of wages/sala­ries, non-payment of employees’ Provident Fund contributions among others,” he said.