Neoplan closure: Workers appeal for govt’s intervention

Workers at the Assemblying Plant of Neoplan (Ghana) Limited, which faces a shutdown, have appealed for government intervention to prevent the shutdown on Friday, as announced by its management.

The workers told the Daily Graphic that they believed if the government awarded the company contracts to buy coaches, it would help them secure their livelihood, adding: “We will be able to break even and still remain in employment.”

The Daily Graphic last Monday broke the news of the impending closure of Neoplan (Ghana) Limited on January 31 due to the lack of contracts and recurring monthly losses as a result of the dormancy of the majority shareholder, the government of Ghana.

The Managing Director, Mr Georges Nassar, told the Daily Graphic: “In the past six, seven years, we have been running the company ourselves, without any contribution from the government. In 2016, we asked the government we wanted to buy additional shares from it, so that we can finance the company ourselves.”

“In 2016, we paid the government for the shares, but it didn’t give us the shares and kept the money,” he said, adding that the money paid for the shares was $173,000.

However, speaking through their Kumasi Union Chairman, Mr Simon Kofi Darkwah, the workers said even though the management had informed them of the closure of the company at the end of this month, “we still believe that the situation could be salvaged”.

No severance

Mr Darkwah, who has worked with the company for the past 15 years, said as of now, the workers did not know their fate and whether they would be paid any redundancy package or not.

He said the last six years had been really difficult for the company, as revenue that accrued to the company was not enough to even pay the workers, let alone leave some to pay its utilities.

He said the managing director had to use his own resources to meet some of the demands of the company when the need arose.

A visit to the Kumasi branch of the company saw an almost deserted company, with just few workers walking around. The once vibrant company was a pale shadow of itself.

Redundancy

According to Mr Darkwah, when he joined the company in 2005, there were close to 600 workers at the Kumasi branch alone, but now “we are about 80 left”.

He explained that because the company was not getting enough contracts, most of the staff had been laid off, “leaving just a few of us”.

He said the news of the shutdown had made some of them fall sick, accounting for the low turnout when the Daily Graphic team visited the company last Tuesday.

Dilemma

Mr Darkwah told the team that most of the workers had dependents to cater for, a situation that had put them in a dilemma as to what to do after Friday.

“We do not want to believe that all hope is lost. We believe the government can do something to salvage the situation and we are banking our hopes on Nana Akufo-Addo and his government,” he told the Daily Graphic.

He said when it was fully operational, the company could employ close to 1,000 people and believed that if Neoplan was considered under the One-district, One-factory initiative, it would create a lot of employment opportunities for Ghanaians and also save the country a lot of foreign exchange.

The Kumasi Union Chairman suggested that money that would be used to import coaches could be given to the company to build some coaches here, even at cheaper cost.

He said there was enough expertise available at the company to build strong and robust coaches suitable for the Ghanaian terrain.