Casual workers at the Asanko Gold Mines have threatened to sue their employer on Monday.
In a press release copied to your authoritative GO, the casual workers say they have been treated unfairly by their employer despite working for three and half years.
Despite assurances to make them full-time employees, Asanko Mines, the group claimed have refused to do so.
The casual workers also claim that management has denied them benefits entitled to them including the non-payment of hospital bills and others.
GO publishes in full the claims by the Casual workers as contained a press release to our stables on Friday.
REDUNDANT ASANKO CASUAL WORKERS THREATEN LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ASANKO GOLD GHANA
ESAASE BONTEFUFUO
AMANSIE WEST DISTRICT
25/11/2022
We redundant Casual Workers of Asanko Gold Ghana is ready willing and able to sue our former employer for the poor employment conditions meted out to us.
The basis of our lawsuit is that even though we had worked continuously for over 3 and a half years as employees of Asanko Gold Mine, the company has treated Us as casual workers and has also conducted its affairs with us in a manner that denied us our economic right under the 1992 constitution.
Facts of the Case
In 2018 Asanko Gold Mine employed six casual workers as flagmen to regulate traffic.
These workers were working alongside PW Mining and they close at the time PW mining closes.
At first, PW was closing at 4 o’clock pm so automatically these flagmen had to close at 4 pm.
The salary for each flagman at that time was thousand Ghana Cedis. After four months PW started working from 6:00 am to 6:00pm so automatically these flagmen had to close at 6 pm but their salary remained the same for one year. Asanko Gold as at that time was not contributing to tier 2 for these casual workers for one and a half years.
In September 2019, Asanko employed another six casual workers in addition to the existing six casual workers making a total of 12 casual workers.
Sunday was our only off day and we worked 12 hrs a day but our salary remained unchanged. Asanko Gold through a third-party employer employed another fifty-six casual workers
in 2019 making a total of 68 casual workers. Out of the sixty-eight casual workers, forty were samplers and twenty-eight were flagmen to direct traffic.
In the year August 2020 Asanko brought in a third party KAPMOH ENTERPRISE to manage the administrative aspect of casual workers.
At that time we worked 12 hours a day and we had 5 off days just like the permanent workers off days and our salary increased from 1000gh to 4000gh cedis.
This pay was lower than those of permanent workers. We had samplers that were permanent, fix term and casuals with the same responsibilities but their salaries were different. The only benefit we received from the company was our monthly salary.
Casual workers were not enjoying the benefits received by permanent and fix term workers.
When a casual worker goes to a company’s clinic and there is a referral to a hospital, the casual worker will have to bear the cost.
Most former Casual Workers of Asanko Gold Ghana from the year 2018 to 2022 are on their sick beds with no money to visit the hospitals.
Some casual workers are now hearing impaired due to the excessive noise they were exposed to during their service at Asanko Gold
Some casual workers worked for three and a half years, others worked for two and a half years and when we were asked to go home the company refused to give us our severance package.
We believe that our rights have been violated and the company did not treat us fairly.
The little we know about the law is that a casual worker does not work more than six months.
If a casual worker works more than six months he is deemed a permanent worker and must benefit from all the entitlement of a permanent worker.
We want the court to direct the company to make the aforementioned casual workers permanent workers and pay them all what is due to them.