Hundreds of aggrieved workers of Ghana’s leading waste management entity, Zoomlion Company Limited, yesterday hit the streets of Accra to demonstrate against their employers for allegedly failing to pay for their services for the past six months.
They wielded placards some of which read: “Zoomlion, 7 months no pay. We need our money,” “Zoomlion, no pay no work” “Pay us our arrears” and “Salary Wahala,” attracting thousands of onlookers at the famous Obra Spot at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle.
“We are not able to take care of ourselves and our children. We didn’t enjoy our Christmas and Easter holidays because we had no money. It is this job we are hoping on to survive but government and Zoom Lion are frustrating us,” the poor sweepers bemoaned.
According to the about 500 workers, since the end of 2014, the management of Zoom Lion and the Government of Ghana had been tossing them round like common beggars over their salaries.
They claimed that at the end of each month when they go to the offices of the company to collect their salaries, they are told that government is responsible for the payment of their salaries; the government too points at Zoom Lion, making them to suspect foul play in the process, hence the strike action.
Leader of the protesting workers, Donkor Joseph, speaking to DAILY GUIDE on the sidelines of the morning-long demonstration, disclosed that since 2012, they had found it difficult to get their salaries paid.
According to him, management of Zoom Lion would owe them about six to seven months’ salaries and when it (management) realized that the suffering workers were desperately in need of money, it would pay them for one or two months, thereby robbing them of monies that legitimately belong to them.
He lamented the fact that despite the long nights and mornings of cold that many workers had to endure in order to keep the towns and cities clean at all times, they were being paid a paltry GH¢100.00 per month per worker.
The sweepers and tricycle riders complained that out of the said GH¢100.00 they were made to buy brooms and other sanitation materials nearly every two weeks, leaving them with only a little amount of money to take home.
Mr Donkor Joseph also said that their employer had failed to pay their social security contributions, “meaning that upon retirement, we will have nothing to dwell on.”
The workers claimed they had no health insurance and called on President Mahama and the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrissu, to investigate the circumstances under which Zoom Lion had failed to pay them for the past six months.
Communications Manager of Zoomlion Company Limited, Roberts Coleman in an interview with this paper, admitted that indeed the company was owing the workers for six months, saying “we are concerned about the plight of our workers.”
According to him, Zoom Lion was making efforts to raise some loans to pay at least their three months’ salaries.
Source: Melvin Tarlue/Daily Guide
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