We want to know status of our investments — LET shareholders
Some shareholders of the Labour Enterprises Trust (LET) Company Limited are demanding the whereabouts of the money they have invested in the company since 1998.
Advertisement
According to the shareholders, who are mostly retired civil servants, more than 85,000 Ghanaian workers were made to buy a minimum of 100 shares at a cost of ¢500,000 (now GH¢50) in 1998, with the money being deducted at source.
A spokesperson for the group, Mr Ernest Duodu-Baah, formerly of the Statistical Service, who called at the offices of the Daily Graphic, said no shareholders’ meeting had been held since the establishment of the company and up till date they did not know what had happened to their money.
Establishment and capital
LET was established by the Public Service Workers Union (PSWU) of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in 1998 to help members during retirement or old age.
An information brief to the shareholders, signed by the then Chairman, Mr Robert Kwesi Cole, and the Chief Executive Officer, Mr Dennis K.Y. Vormawor, indicated that the total capital raised at the end of November 1999 stood at ¢5.47 billion (now GH¢546,800).
It claimed that there were a few establishments which had to pay off the balance of deductions made from shareholders’ salaries to raise the capital.
Merchant Bank
According to Mr Duodu-Baah, the Registrar of LET was Merchant Bank, which issued certificates of shares allotted to all the shareholders on November 1, 1998 and all efforts to get the bank or the PSWU to update shareholders on their money had so far proved futile.
He said the sale of Merchant Bank without the mention of the investment by LET had since been a source of worry to the pensioners.
Other Trending Stories
Investments made by LET
Mr Duodu-Baah said in the information brief, they had also been informed that LET had successfully established an insurance company, Unique Insurance Company Limited, with over ¢2 billion (now GH¢200,000) of the capital raised, representing 86.98 per cent of the total capital of ¢2.4 billion (now GH¢240,000).
He also indicated that ¢1.8 billion (now GH¢180,000) was also invested in the City Car Parks Limited, representing 20 per cent of the shares and another ¢300 million (now GH¢30,000) for the running of water tanker services within the Accra metropolis, among other places.
Mr Duodu-Baah, therefore, appealed to the government, the PSWU and all beneficiaries of the investment “to tell us where our money is as Merchant bank has been sold and no mention was made of the billions of old cedis that LET collected from poor Ghanaian workers”.