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| Ghana''s Oil Refinery suffers Brain Drain |
9/26/2005 |
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The Managing Director, Anglogold Ashanti (Iduapriem) Limited, David Kwesi Renner, is confident government can achieve its vision of being a technologically competitive global economy by the year 2020, if existing challenges in the educational system were addressed.
The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) is facing a critical brain drain problem as key technical staff members are resigning to seek "greener pastures" in the Middle East.
As of last Friday, 14 key technical staff members, majority of whom had rendered invaluable services to the refinery forthe past 15 years, had tendered in their letters of resignation.
Majority of those who have resigned are said to be on their way to work for Qatar and Oman refineries based in the Middle East.
The Public Affairs Manager of the Refinery, Aba Lokko confirmed the reports. "We have lost very key skilled and comptent staff members and their departure posses a threat to the smooth operations of the refinery."
Reports say the departure of the personnel has led to the shut down of the Residual Catalytic Cracking plant, which produces LPG and petrol although some official of the refinery said the shutdown is for routine maintenance and insists it will not affect supply of petrol and gas.
Mrs. Lokko however said the situation could be arrested. She said short, medium and long-term strategies would be instituted to address the problem. The immediate and short-term strategies would involve "linking up with SK Corporation of Korea, which was part of the installation of the plant, to send down some of its technical staff members to assist in our operations," Mrs. Lokko said.
To this end, 10 personnel of SK Corporation, comprising technicians and engineers, are expected to arrive on Thursday to help in the refinery''s operations, as well as train more people to run the RFCC and other tehnical units.
"They are also expected to do a crash programme to train new staff members who will be recruited."
As part of the short-term solution to the problem, the refinery would be going through reshuffling, to take staff from other departments to augment operations of the plant, while the medium-term solution would involve recruiting others for training. The long term strategy involves reviewing conditiions of service and adopting pragmatic measures to retain the staff members.
Mrs. Lokko conceded that TOR could not match what was currently being offered by Qatar and Oman, which included sending down free air tickets, cars and houses to staff members who had resigned.
TOR has no other choice but to respect the decision of the staff members who had resigned, although their services were immensely crucial to the operations of the country''s refinery.
Workers say several attempts to negotiate better salaries and improved working conditions have failed. But Mrs. Lokko said the corporation is looking into the concerns.
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