TOR WORKERS UNHAPPY (PAGE 31, OCT 21)

WORKERS of the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) are raising red flags over management’s inability to procure crude oil for processing, leading to acute fuel shortage throughout the country.
They are also calling for the removal of the Energy Minister, Dr Joe Oteng-Adjei, and one of his deputies, Dr Kwabena Donkor, whom they accused of subverting the refinery’s ability to procure crude for processing.
The workers threatened to embarked on an industrial action if the President did not intervene immediately to resolve the issue.
This was contained in a resolution jointly signed by Messrs Samuel Mills Anderson and Israel Adrah, secretaries of the junior and senior staff unions of the Tema District Council of Labour.
In the resolution, the leadership of the General Transport Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union (GTP & CWU) and the Professional Management Staff Union (PMSU) called on the council to, as a matter of urgency, to confer with President Mills to intervene and bring lasting solution to the issue of crude oil procurement for the refinery.
The resolution said non-availability of crude oil for processing had resulted in a substantial deterioration of the refinery’s installations, which have been lying fallow for the past 10 months, expressing the fear that the inactivity would ultimately add up to the already huge TOR debt in view of the increasing cost of maintenance.
The workers also maintained that following TOR’s inability to import crude, the refinery was incurring a daily loss of $300,000 as a result of the shutdown of the Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracker (RFCC) Plant.
The resolution noted that industries such as Unilever, Nestle, and Textiles Ghana Limited (GTP) operating in the Tema metropolis and depending on TOR for residual fuel as raw materials for their operations were on the verge of temporary closure owing to the crisis.
It wondered why an agreement between the government and Sahara Oil in which TOR was expected to take delivery of 900,000 barrels of crude oil by the close of this week had been cancelled, although the same company was supplying the Volta River Authority (VRA) light crude to enable VRA run its generating plant.
The acting Managing Director of TOR, Dr Kwame Ampofo, could not be reached for comment as several calls to his phone went unanswered.