Business News of Thursday, 6 September 2018
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2018-09-06
Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah, Chairman of Parliament Finance Committee
Consolidated Bank of Ghana is set to close down 98 branches out of the 191 they have across the country.
As part of efforts to streamline its operations and downsize to minimise cost and remain profitable, the bank intends to keep only 93 branches of the five failed banks.
This was made known when the Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Mark Assibey Yeboah addressed the media after the in-camera session with officials of the bank.
According to Dr. Assibey Yeboah, management of Consolidated Bank is yet to arrive at a decision to determine the number of people who may lose their jobs after the rationalisation process is done.
“We asked the question of the number of jobs that they expect to cut and they said they’re still in the process of rationalising the platform they want to use and that will determine where they will go. What we have from them is the number of branches that they will maintain. As of now they have 191 and they’ve come to the determination that they will keep 93 of branches but beyond that, we don’t know the number of jobs that would be lost. They didn’t give us timelines but it’s safe to say that they said they are going to close 98 branches”, he said.
He further indicated that the bank intends to do a nationwide employee assessment of all their employees across the regions to determine the number of workers they may want to keep.
“As for the engagement with the employees, all the employees will have their engagement with Consolidated Bank terminated at the end of September. They were given a 60-day probationary contract. Now going forward Consolidated Bank is going to do a nationwide employee assessment of all the employees of Consolidated Bank. And they’ve given regional centres in Accra, Kumasi, Sunyani, Ho….so all employees are going to go through that assessment and then they will come to a determination as to the number of employees they want to keep so end September employees will have their probationary contract come to an end”, he stressed.
Meanwhile Minority Leader of Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu has called on government to intervene by making sure staff who lose their jobs get properly compensated.
He raised concerns over the growing job losses in the financial sector and blamed government for not handling the crises very well especially the job losses that have resulted from the collapse of the banks.
“I am concerned about the loss of jobs and whether or not there will be capacity to pay severance. What happens to the wards and children of the affected persons as school reopens? What is it that the government of Ghana can do to find new life to those institutions? In the public interest and for the public good, parliament and the finance committee must be concerned about the banking sector and employment in the banking sector and the consequence of severance and resulting unemployment arising out of the collapse of those financial institutions,” he said.