ECG Concession: Court Dismisses Injunction Application By Staff

Labour High Court presided over Justice Lorrenda Owusu has dismissed an interlocutory injunction application by employees of ECG seeking to halt the Compact between Ghana and the Millennium Challenge Corporation over their redundancy packages.

The presiding Judge held that there may be a case or question to be trialed in the substantive matter before her, however, she cannot establish that on the balance of convenience, the ECG workers do stand to suffer any serious damages as compared to the serious hardship and or damages that the State is likely to suffer if an injunction is granted to stop the implementation of the MCC.

The court thus dismissed the application for an interlocutory injunction and pledged to ensure that there is an expeditious trial of the substantive matter before the court.

Background

PUWU sued the government over moves to hand over the operations of the company to a concessionaire without any redundancy package for them.

In their suit, they are seeking a perpetual injunction to restrain the defendants, their assigns and privies from continuing with the Compact Agreement between the government of Ghana and the MCC.
The compact was signed in August 2014, geared towards the reform of the electricity distribution sector of Ghana, by among other issues, appointing a concessionaire to take over the distribution of electricity from the ECG and related agreements.




The Ghana Power Compact will provide Ghana with a grant of US$498,200,000 to improve the performance of the power sector.

Severance concerns

The ECG workers prayed the court, to among others, declare the decision by the Minister of Energy to conduct redundancy negotiations with individual employees of the ECG illegal, and a gross violation of Section 65 of the Labour Act, 2005 (Act 651).

They contended that discussions that went into negotiations for the sale of ECG, did not factor the declaration of redundancy, despite the content of Section 65 of the Labour Act.

Source: StarrFMonline.com