President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
Workers of the Tema Shipyard dry dock who recently protested over their conditions of service, blaming the Managing Director of the company as the cause of their troubles, have beaten a retreat from their position.
In a statement released on Friday, they pleaded with President Akufo-Addo to pardon them revealing they had been instigated by some detractors of the government.
“We wish to express our deepest apologies to His Excellency President Akufo-Addo for any embarrassment that we have brought his government, for even though our protest had focused on Dr. Alexander Yaw Adusei, we know that ultimately we cast the President in bad light,” the workers wrote.
Preferring to remain anonymous, they claim that they have woken to the truth that they had acted out of naivety and allowed themselves to be puppets in the hands of some people with political interest at the company.
“We were influenced by careful political propagandists who masterfully played on our emotions and blinded us to the practicalities of the situation on the ground,” they wrote.
The statement has two signatures of two workers who explained they had signed on behalf of the rest of the dry dock workers. However, they chose to remain anonymous.
Recently, some supposedly unhappy workers of the Tema dry dock staged a protest over what they said was their poor conditions of service. And in the protest, they focused on the MD for the company, Dr. Alexander Yaw Adusei, blaming him for their troubles.
Dr. Alexander Adusei, who is also the Director of the Keta Port project, was also painted as “anti – people” and a danger to the company.
However, in the remorseful statement released on Friday, the workers lamented that their earlier action had overlooked a clear fact that the Tema dry dock company has not been making profits for a long time now.
“As staff of the company, the company’s inability to make profit is a collective failure and not the failure of the Managing Director alone. We acknowledge our part in this and wish to withdraw our accusations.
“we believe that if the company were to be making profits, all the benefits that we complained about would have been made available to us,” the statement said.
The statement apologized to President Akufo-Addo profusely for, “creating the impression that your excellency harmed the company by appointing Dr. Alexander Yaw Adusei. Now that we know that we were misled, we confess that Dr. Alexander Yaw Adusei, who is fighting corruption in the company, is actually the best for the Tema dry dock. Infact, Dr. Alexander Yaw Adusei has good intentions for workers but unfortunately, we were incited against him with rough propaganda methods”.