200 TOR Workers Sacked

The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) has sent home 200 of its casual workers.
This according to reports is part of a retrenchment exercise which may see many more casual workers at TOR joining their counterparts.

Chairman of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical workers Union at TOR, Elton John Botwe confirmed the layoffs to Accra based Class FM, yesterday.
According to him, the dismissed staff were not part of a union and therefore, not much could be done about their situation.

“…when people are told to go home, when they are part of the union, something can be done about it. But this is the case they are not part of the union, they are contractual workers,” he said.
Mr. Botwe explained that some of the casual workers sometimes have their contracts renewed and could be working for years however, it is not a continuous process.

“Some come let’s say from January to March in a year and might go and come again let’s say in December so when he is talking he will say I have been with TOR for about four years but it is not a continuous flow,” he added.

This action comes barely a month after the management of TOR shut down the Crude Distillation Unit and the Residue Catalytic Cracker (RCC) for the unavailability of crude oil to feed the refinery.

The refinery, since January 2017, has been unable to raise letters of credit to import crude for processing. Earlier, energy think tank, Institute of Energy Security (IES), had warned that several jobs could be on the line if TOR did not receive urgent support from government to enable it raise the letters of credit.
Some of the affected staff, according to source, have worked with TOR for about five years.

Source: Thepublisher