Over 60 workers of Karpowership Ghana Limited have been dismissed, according to reports.
They include 10 engineers and over 50 staff of two firms contracted to work on the ship.
They are Eye-Con, an engineering firm which undertakes maintenance services on the ship and Blagodolph, a cleaning agency.
The contracts of the 10 Ghanaian engineers, who worked with the companies before the arrival of the Karpowership in November last year, were said to have been cancelled this month.
A letter written to some of the staff and signed by the Karpowership Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Orhan Remzi Kardeniz said: “We regret to inform you of management’s decision to terminate the fixed term contract of employment between yourself and Karpowership Ghana Company Limited with effect from 7th April.”
According to sources, the workers were sacked due to language challenges which made it difficult for the Turkish supervisors to work effectively with the Ghanaian employees on the ship.
The dismissal of the Ghanaian workers is expected to pave the way for the company to employ expatriates from Turkey.
A new country manager from Turkey, Erkut Ates, has already taken over from American Robert Kremer during whose tenure the barge came to Ghana.
The powership was contracted by government from Turkey as a medium term measure to mitigate the effects of the power crisis.
The power barge, which has an installed capacity of 235mw, has been generating electricity in Ghana since December 18, 2015.
Aggrieved Workers
A dismissed engineer told Joy Business that “On the 4th of April our HR met us and told us by the end of April, almost half of the Ghanaians would be out of the company because the new management is saying that there are too many people on the barge…but we knew that he was just trying to get rid of the Ghanaians on board.”
“I know that if contracts are terminated, it should be based on performance, now we don’t know the basis on which our contracts were terminated, we don’t know who did the assessment, we don’t understand what is happening?”
He accused management of the company of employing expatriates from Turkey, saying “what baffles us the most is that as Ghanaians are being sacked from the barge, they are bringing in their Turkish nationals and to me it is very bad.”
Language Barrier
The workers suspect that the senior engineering team members, who were Turkish, were finding it difficult to communicate with them, hence their decision.
“The problem is they can’t speak the English language clearly, most of the times it’s sign language. But when they speak and you don’t get them, they are pissed off. They try to throw off their hands at you. To the extent that one of them threw an object at a Ghanaian one time,” a dismissed staff said.
Some of the workers have also accused the company of not giving them adequate training to enable them work appropriately, accusing senior officials of the Turkish company of discrimination.
An official of Karpowership told BUSINESS GUIDE that a formal statement on the matter would be issued soon.
<<Print>>