Abraham Koomson, Secretary General of the Ghana Federation of Labour, has criticized the intention to sell a 60% ownership in four Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) hotels to Rock City Hotel, which is owned by Food and Agriculture Minister Bryan Acheampong.
Mr Koomson believes that rather than selling these profitable public assets to Mr Acheampong, the government should consider employing him to operate the hotels if he is considered qualified.
The four hotels involved are Labadi Beach Hotel, La Palm Beach Hotel, Royal Ridge Hotel, and Busua Beach Hotel.
In May, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, a Member of Parliament for North Tongu, exposed the agreement and questioned why SSNIT would sell 60% of its ownership in the hotels to a minister of state.
Despite a petition to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) requesting that the president halt the hotel sales, there are reports of advancement of plans between managers of SSNIT and Rock City Hotel to finalize the deal.
This intransigent posture of the two parties seems to validate the speculation of wide spread state capture that has been going on since the takeover of the President Akuffo Addo led administration.
“Why do you sell national assets? Why should we sell such hotels in these prime areas? For what? For how much?” he fumed.
“If Bryan Acheampong has the capacity to run and operate the SSNIT hotels, why don’t we employ him? Instead of selling the hotels to him, he should be appointed as CEO to run the hotels for us,” he stated.
According to Mr. Koomson, SSNIT has no excuse to complain about insufficient funds to pay contributors as there’s always inflow of workers’ contributions. It was also highlighted that SSNIT is an entity entirely for the Ghanaian workers and government cannot lay claim to it since it has never contributed to the fund.
“SSNIT can’t complain about money because every month they need not go anywhere to go and look for a loan or whatever, the inflow from the contributions just comes in. If you are an employer and you default payment, you’d be in trouble. So SSNIT cannot complain of capital,” he argued. Mr. Koomson expressed his thoughts on the topic during an interview with Joyfm Newsfile few days ago.
