Ex-staff of COCOBOD retrenched in 1993 and 1994 without retrenchment packages after government restructured COCOBOD, today boycotted a validation exercise conducted by COCOBOD in Koforidua.
The angry retrenched workers accused COCOBOD for conducting the exercise arbitrary to the agreed requirements and modalities for the validation exercise.
They contend that the volume of documents being demanded by the validation team could lead to disqualification of many of its members some of whom are deceased but represented by their children and spouses and those who have lost their documents through fire and flood incidents.
The angry Septuagenarians and octogenarians began hooting at the officials whilst some rained curses accusing them or attempt to cheat them.
The former Workers of COCOBOD numbering about close to 7000 across the country have been battling COCOBOD for the past 26 years through engagements and legal processes for retrenching them without paying their redundancy and severance packages.
The Supreme Court of Ghana ruled on behalf of the affected workers in 2005 COCOBOD later appealed for review but the case was withdrawn from Court for out of court settlement.
The CEO of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahene Adu, reportedly instituted a committee to reach an amicable settlement with the members of the Association of Retrenched Staff of Ghana COCOBOD.
After reaching an agreement with the Association for payment of the packages, it was also agreed for a validation exercise to be conducted.
The Validation team on Monday, March 2, 2020, started work at the COCOBOD office in Koforidua but turned chaotic after many members of the Association failed to provide the tall list of documents demanded by the validation team.
The Frustrated former staff of COCOBOD mostly aged began to agitate forcing their leadership to call for a total boycott of the exercise.
Mathew Dogbe is the National Chairman of the Association of Retrenched Staff of Ghana COCOBOD told Bryt Fm that “We have boycotted the process. This is not what we agreed to. We agreed that any valid document presented as proof should be accepted but now they are demanding appointment letters, retrenchment letters, SSNIT, etc, where are we going to get all these. We are going to talk to our lawyer”.
Some of the frustrated members of the association vented their anger with a call on President Akufo Addo to intervene before they die out of hunger.
The validation team refused to speak to the media.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Obed Ansah
