Ghana’s only oil refinery – Tema Oil Refinery – is deliberately being collapsed in order to justify its privatisation or outright sale, Chairman of the People’s National Convention (PNC) Mr Bernard Mornah has alleged.

“I wish that we had authority; we would have immediately sacked those who are currently [handling] the affairs of TOR because it appears that it’s a deliberate thing to ensure that TOR does not operate very well, so that it can be privatised or sold out,” Mr Mornah said at an oil and gas forum organised for political parties by Penplusbytes on Friday February 12, 2016, adding: “This, we have done to most state institutions over the past and the consequence is that we have lost jobs and we have suffered as a people.

“TOR has the capacity to do what it’s supposed to do, unfortunately it appears that some rigidity – overemployment in TOR. If you go and see the workforce in TOR and then the job available, it’s clear that we have provided so much jobs for the boys, when, in fact, there is no job to be done.

“And all these things are adding to the expenditure of TOR, thereby collapsing that particular institution. We can’t be importing refined oil when we have the capacity to refine it in Ghana. We think that TOR should be retooled and those who are there, if they do not have the capacity, we should ensure that we bring appropriate and efficient capacity to ensure that it functions,” Mr Mornah added.

TOR resumed operations about two weeks ago after it was shut down for about a year following engineering and financial problems. The Refinery owes about $650 million. It has started refining about a million barrels of crude this month.