The COVID-19 pandemic has had serious impacts on Ghanaian businesses, forcing many firms to cut costs by reducing staff hours, cutting wages, and in some cases laying off workers.
Over 300 workers of the Aviation Handling Service Ghana, have been sent home in a redundancy exercise due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A letter titled: “Notice of Redundancy,” dated March 4, 2021, and signed by Thierry Maillot, the Managing Director to the affected staff, made available to the media, gave the staff only one month’s notification.
The letter stated: “your employment contract shall be terminated through Redundancy. We are hereby serving you with one month notice effective 5th March, 2021”.
The letter explained that the action was due to the negative impact of COVID-19 on its operations and the Aviation Industry as a whole.
The letter stressed that, the Management of Aviation Handling Service Ghana had to embark on the redundancy exercise effective April 6, 2021, to cut down on its workforce for its continuous existence.
It said: “The negotiated redundancy package is two month basic salary for each year of service,” it noted, adding that the said amount would be paid in two equal instalments on the effective date of the redundancy exercise.
“During the last week of the notice period, you will be expected to hand over all company properties in your care to the Human Resources office.
“We thank you for your valuable services to Aviation Handling Service-Ghana over the years and we wish you well in your future endeavours”.
Ghana’s aviation industry grew at an average of 7.9% per annum, the Government’s intended overall direction for national development, as contained in the Co-ordinated Programme of Economic and Social Development Policies (CP) (2017-2024), was to create the conditions for the private sector to thrive in the aviation industry in order to propel growth and create employment, especially for the youth” ( GNA, 2017).
In spite of the Government putting in place diverse support interventions for businesses including the establishment of a Coronavirus Alleviation Programme to protect jobs, livelihoods and support small businesses; many firms are still struggling to balance their books as a result of the impact the pandemic had had on their operations.
More Job losses Expected
As Ghana faces challenges with power supply across the nation, it is expected that many more people are going to lose their jobs and businesses are going to fold up if measures are not taking to mitigate the impact.
The TUC has warned that more firms may be laying off workers because of the recent power outages throughout the country. It said because there was no timetable covering the load-shedding exercise being done by ECG, employers are not able to put workers on rotational job schedules.
