Bosai Group, the majority shareholder of Ghana Bauxite Company (GBA) has addressed the meagre salary payment allegations levelled against them by some irate workers whiles clarifying that only interns receive less than the GH¢800 average salary of employees.
On June 21, 2019, some angry workers at the Bauxite mining site in Awaso went on rampage after protesting for two days over concerns of alleged poor working conditions meted out to them by their employers in addition to low salaries they receive at the end of the month.
The protest at the end of the day resulted in the burning of at least 6 administrative offices of Bosai Group as well as some trucks used for loading the mined Bauxite.
Addressing the allegations levelled against Bosai Group in an interview with ModernGhana, Vice General Manager William Liu Xin has explained that only interns numbering about 15 receive the quoted GH¢350 at the end of the month.
According to him, those people receive lower than the average GH¢800 salary because they are new and only engage in assisting roles as they continue to receive training from the experts. He opines that their salary will rise eventually when they gain hands on experience as far as they work they do at the mining site is concerned.
“I will like to put some clarification on this one because firstly they are saying that we pay the workers with very low salary (GH¢350), actually it's not true because we have 300 outsource of workers and our average payment is around GH¢800 and the high payment at the high side is about GH¢3,500”.
“There are very few people who get this GH¢350 which is at the intern level because they are new and they are freshmen. They normally have no skill and we have to train them a lot and they only can do assisting jobs”.
“So after probably 1 year they will be paid 400 or 450”, he stressed.
Meanwhile, the Police is said to have arrested about 4 of the vandalizers of the Awaso mine and continue with their investigations to ensure all the perpetrators are brought to book to face the law.