AngloGold Ashanti To Spend $220m On Jobs Cut


AngloGold Ashanti is expected to spend about $220 million as settlement packages for some 500 workers, who will be affected by its retrenchment exercise scheduled for August this year.

The exercise, the company indicated, has become necessary owing to the rising cost of production, high under-performance of workers and unstable world market prices.

Yiadom Boakye Amponsah, a former General Manager of Human Resources at Anglogold, who spoke to Citi Fm, an Accra-based radio station, said the inability of Anglogold to make profits was due to mismanagement of its operation.

Mr. Boakye Amponsah stated that the decision by the company to lay-off workers was unfortunate and misplaced.

But Mr. Boakye Amponsah said the Obuasi Mine experienced such challenges in the past, saying ‘I believe that there are a lot of interventions we can consider; I think we have a second look at the programme go through a serious re-think and possibly review what they are doing’

He noted that about 80 percent of the people who will be laid-off will mismanage the retrenchment packages that will be given them and come back to Obuasi.

He said the Obuasi Mine is likely to ‘die’ if the situation persists.

‘The approach by Anglogold is wrong; the timing is an issue; a lot more thought process should go into the strategy,’ he said.

Meanwhile, some traditional leaders in Obuasi are unhappy about the retrenchment exercise.

The severance package is being negotiated among the management, local union and representatives of the Ghana Mine Workers Union.

He further explained that the new managers of the Obuasi Mine have themselves to blame.

‘In a matter of the 10 years that they have been here, they have used about eight or nine managers, which organisation can survive like that, every year or two you change management and structure, how do you hope to have continuity,’ he quizzed.

Mr. Boakye Amponsah charged Anglogold to ‘block all the loopholes and chart a new path and interrogate why there was no profitability.’

Citifmonline
 

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