WAMCo, a cocoa processing company
in Takoradi in the Western Region, is back to business and
already making profit.
The company was shut down for close
to three years after Cocobod, under the erstwhile Mahama administration, allegedly
stopped supplying cocoa beans to the company, forcing a total of about 254
employees of WAMCo to be sent home by management of the company.
The Akufo-Addo administration,
while campaigning for power in 2016, promised to help resuscitate the company.
Yesterday, a visit by President Akufo-Addo
and the CEO of Cocobod, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, to the company in Takoradi revealed
that WAMCo was making a net profit of $2 million.
“I see the WAMCo narrative as the
tragedy of cocoa beans in Ghana. The company could not get cocoa beans to
process. Mr. President, what you said about the previous regime was true. They
couldn’t even produce cocoa beans to feed the processing factory,” the Cocobod
CEO pointed out.
He was emphatic that the New Patriotic
Party (NPP) government came to produce enough beans to supply WAMCO. “WAMCO was
shut down but it’s now up. WAMCO collapsed but has now resurrected and it’s on
its feet under the NPP. It is now making a net profit of $2 million
which is very huge. Now, we have paid all the arrears of the workers,” Mr Aidoo
added.
WAMCo Tragedy
In July 2016, three workers of the then
distressed company were killed in a ghastly road accident at Komenda Sefwi,
near Beposo on the Cape Coast-Takoradi highway.
They were among a group of 22
workers of the company who were travelling from Takoradi to Parliament House in
Accra to listen to the then Finance Minister Seth Terkper answer questions
relating to their company, and follow up with a petition to the then Mahama/NDC
government about WAMCo and its assets.
Mr Aidoo said immediately he
assumed office as Cocobod boss, a team was built to conduct technical,
structural and financial audit of the company, adding “a committee was
thereafter constituted to oversee the reactivation of the company.”
“An initial 150 tonnes of cocoa was
supplied by WAMCo in September 2017. In the 2017 and 2018 seasons, a total of
4,462 tonnes of cocoa was supplied to the company,” he said, adding “for the
period from October 2018 to May 2019, a total of 5,540 tonnes of cocoa has been
supplied to the company. The company now has a total of 170 employees.”
WAMCo is a joint venture private
company between government which owns 40 per cent shares and Walter Schroeder
of Germany which owns 60 per cent.
President
President Akufo-Addo, who was visibly elated as he was taken round the factory, remarked “those responsible for the collapse of the company should stop giving lectures to cocoa farmers.”
From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi
