The Union of Industry Commerce & Finance Workers (UNICOF) has described as shocking, a decision by the management of the Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited (CBG) to lay off 1,700 workers.

John Amegashie, General Secretary of UNICOF, noted that the development is a breach of confidence by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) since the Governor, Dr Ernest Addison, announced during the merger of the five banks into the CBG that staff were not going to lose their jobs immediately.

The 1,700 employees will no more have their jobs by the end of September 2018.

Out of the number, 700 are mobile bankers of the now-defunct Beige Bank, while 1,000 were former employees of The Royal Bank, The Construction Bank, uniBank and Sovereign Bank.

The Bank of Ghana recently fused uniBank together with Sovereign Bank, The Royal Bank, The Beige Bank and The Construction Bank to form CBG.

The fusion of the five banks follows the takeover of two other local banks: UT Bank and Capital Bank by GCB Bank in August 2017 with the blessing of the regulator after it emerged that they were in dire straits.

In total, seven local banks have gone under, as the Bank of Ghana’s 31 December 2018 deadline for all universal banks to recapitalise from the GHS120 million to GHS400 million draws closer.



Speaking on Ghana Yensom on Accra 100.5FM hosted by Chief Jerry Forson on Tuesday, 28 August, Mr Amegashie said: “This news came to us as a shock. On 1 August, the Governor of the Bank of Ghana announced during the merger of the five banks and he stated among other things that all the staff will be under the Consolidated Bank and none of them will lose their jobs immediately.

“So, it came to us as a shock that 1,700 will lose their jobs now. This is a breach of confidence by the regulator.”

He further called on the management of the Consolidated Bank to engage UNICOF on the exit package for the affected staff.

“We expect the Consolidated Bank to do the needful to engage us on the exit package. There haven’t been any consultations on this yet,” he said.