Ghana must avert curse of oil and gas industry — Asamaoh

Page 13, Aug 25, 2010
Story: Emmanuel Adu-Gyamerah

THE Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress, Mr Kofi Asamoah, has called on the government to put in place adequate structures and appropriate legal measures to ensure that the ordinary Ghanaian benefited from the oil and gas find.
He said it would be impossible for Ghana to overcome the challenges associated with the production of oil and gas if it failed to put in place measures to ensure that people and not leaders, as well as giant oil companies benefited from the find.
He said with both good and bad lessons available from other oil and gas producing countries, Ghana could not fail, but rely on such experiences to avoid the curse associated with the industry.
Addressing a day’s seminar organised by the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union in Accra, he said averting the curse of the oil and gas industry did not require just optimism but laws to create a legitimate and effective framework to regulate the industry.
The seminar was on the theme, “Petroleum woes: repositioning for the production of oil and gas in Ghana”.
He said for the TUC, an oil economy presented opportunities for the creation of jobs and a national economy with enough fiscal space to pay a living wage.
Mr Asamoah explained that would, however, not come on a silver platter since the experience was that the multinationals were less tolerant of trade unions.
He said that required a repositioned TUC to organise and ensure that the rights of workers are protected.
“We must take keen interest in occupational health and safety issues and not only concern ourselves with bread and butter issues”.
He said the TUC had been following developments in the oil and gas sector and expressed concern about the seeming secrecy surrounding oil and gas contracts.
Mr Asamoah said it was only appropriate that Ghanaians got to know the contents of oil and gas agreements and contracts entered into on their behalf by the government.
Touching on oil-related bills currently before Parliament, the TUC boss said it was difficult to understand the fact that organised labour was not represented on the oil revenue management board and expressed the hope that such anomaly would be addressed before the bill was passed into law.
Delivering the keynote address, a Deputy Minister of Energy, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, said government was conscious of the fact that the oil and gas find in the Jubilee Field was an opportunity to enhance the country’s growth and development.
He said it was against that backdrop that the government had shown commitment by taking a number of important initiatives to make the Jubilee project happen in a manner that would ensure maximum benefit to all the major stakeholders in the country.
On human resource development for the sector, Mr Buah said the Ministries of Energy and Education were collaborating to develop the necessary curricula for Technical and Vocational Education Training (COTVET) to meet the human resource requirements of the oil and gas industry.
He said it was heartwarming that virtually all the major public universities had introduced oil and gas related studies, while some polytechnics and technical institutions had begun to introduce hands-on petroleum-related courses to provide some of the most essential skills required at the production and middle-management levels for the effective functioning of the industry.
Mr Buah gave assurance that government would continue to ensure that the right regulatory framework was in place to enable the Ghanaians worker succeed in the oil and gas industry.
For his part, the General Secretary of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union, Mr E.A Mensah, said the union was reliably informed that even though recruitment of workers by private employment agencies for the oil and gas sector was going on well, the employers on the rigs were not treating Ghanaian personnel on-board fairly.
He, therefore, called on the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC), which is the regulator to regularly monitor activities of the various rigs to protect Ghanaian workers on-board.