Workers at the Consolidated Diamonds Ghana Limited, a mining company in Akwatia in the Eastern Region have embarked on a sit-down strike over a year’s unpaid salaries as well as several years’ of unpaid allowances.

The workers are demanding payment of their twelve-month salary arrears and other allowances and also want to know their fate as their contracts expire.

Interim Secretary of the company Samuel Danyo said “a complete one year without salary, and three years three months provident funds have not been paid. Every year we sign a contract for the company for the work and in the contract terms, at the end of our service, we have to take our benefits. Seven years now the benefits have not been paid due to that we decided to embark on strike.”

He explained “because by the 21st of this December our contract will end and we have to sign a new contract. And we can’t sign a new contract without seeing anything, so we have to know the way forward.”

As to why the gates of the premises of the company have remained closed, he noted “the road leading through the mines and then outside the mines, there is some community around the mines, so because we are going on sit down strike we can’t open our gate down so that anybody can just take anything that belongs to the company outside of the mines so we have to make sure that everything is intact and that is why our gates have been locked.”

The workers say they have been invited for a meeting today to address their grievances.

Meanwhile, government is currently looking for a strategic investor to take over the operations of the mine following the poor performance by the current investors.