Hand over management of PSC Tema Shipyard to GPHA, workers petition President

Workers of the PSC Tema Shipyard have petitioned President John Dramani Mahama to intervene in handing over the management of the shipyard and drydock to the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA).

According to the workers, the GPHA has the capacity to turn around the dwindling fortunes of the shipyard, since it has, over the years, operated a similar facility profitably at the Takoradi Port.

At a press conference addressed jointly by the senior and junior staff associations, the workers said the GPHA had, over the years, operated the Drydock and Slipway Facility at the Takoradi Port which it rehabilitated in 2010 at a cost of $14.3 million and could thus turn the Tema Shipyard into a profitable venture if the facility was placed under its management. 

They said the complexity of the work involved in ship repairs, assembling and outfitting would also necessitate the deployment of technologies and the GPHA had the needed financial strength and human resource to ensure some level of automation of some processes in ship repair works.

They, therefore, called on President Mahama to respond favourably to the petition which they sent to him on May 4, 2016, regarding the transfer of the facility to the GPHA.

GPHA

The Vice Chairman of the SSA, Mr Christian Dogbey, addressing the press conference, stated that it would only be fair for the GPHA to be made to operate the facility to enable the authority to recoup the $6.36 million it paid on behalf of government to buy back the 60 per cent stake in the drydock from the Malaysian operator in 2011.

He indicated that the success story from the partnership between the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) and the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation  (BOST) Company could be replicated in the case of the shipyard if the government heeded the recommendations in the Chris Ackumey report prior to the exit of the Malaysians.

Mismanagement

The workers claimed that mismanagement from September 2013 till date had plunged the shipyard into its present state.

According to them, the performance of the company has taken a nose-dive over the last three years since the present Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr Hashim Rashid Ali-Tunde, took over and, therefore, called for a forensic audit. 

They said the company at present was surviving on deposits made by clients and wondered why a company which could not make statutory payments could afford to pay a sub-sea survey contract fee to McHall Engineering Limited to the tune of GH¢165,642 and wondered whether this was not just mismanagement by the present leadership.

Capital injection

According to the workers, the shipyard at present needs $25 million to enable it to replace its dewatering pumps, dock slide, mobile cranes and ship repair equipment over a two-year period.

The capital injection, they said, was needed in the areas of retooling, capacity building of workers and plant retrofitting projects.

A rehabilitation of the shipyard, they said, was necessary, since cargo trade volumes were likely to increase marginally with the Tema Port expansion project set to begin in August 2016.