The Chairman of the Supreme Consultative Council of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Alhaji Idriss Alhassan, has revealed that the people who recently took part in a demonstration organised by the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) to clamour for the removal of Cocobod CEO Dr Stephen Opuni were not workers of the state-owned cocoa company.

The ICU, led by its General Secretary, Solomon Kotei, on Thursday May 12 presented a petition to the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations as part of the march against Dr Opuni, who they accuse of running down the company.

But, speaking in an interview with Prince Minkah, host of the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3FM Monday May 16, Alhaji Alhassan said the demonstrators were workers of the defunct West African Mills Company (WAMCO) located in Takoradi and were bussed to Accra by the ICU General Secretary to take part in the demonstration.

According to him, if Cocobod staff were to demonstrate, the numbers would be in their thousands, and not the hundreds seen last Thursday.

“There is no justification for that unnecessary demonstration,” he said, adding: “WAMCO staff are not workers of Cocobod”.

“I told him [Solomon Kotei] the workers he showcased as workers of Cocobod were rather staff of West Africa Mills, a defunct cocoa processing company in Takoradi. … He bussed them, transported them from Takoradi to Accra, and added his own staff of ICU to demonstrate,” he alleged.

Alhaji Alhassan further said the numerous cocoa farmers in the country “are the stakeholders who deal with Dr Opuni on the day-to-day administration of Cocobod, and, so, we will never support such a cause”.

When asked whether Dr Opuni was corrupt, he retorted: “He is a human being, but to the best of our knowledge there is no corruption pointing to him.”

“All those things they are saying are not true, they just pick it from some disgruntled staff that are in and out of the industry,” he said.

In a response to the comments, Mr Kotei said on the same programme that Alhaji Alhassan could not hold himself out as Union Chairman as he had retired.

He revealed that Dr Opuni had deliberately failed to acknowledge the new Union leader.

According to Mr Kotei, Dr Opuni was using Alhaji Alhassan to create the ongoing confusion in the union.

“The man you just spoke to, he is not the Union Chairman; he is the conduit that Dr Opuni is using. He is a retiree. When he retired, his vice chair was supposed to take over. A letter to that effect has been written to Dr Opuni, but he refused to acknowledge the one to take over as the chair of the union,” he said.

“He [Alhaji Idriss Alhassan] is not a member of the Union, but being used by Dr Opuni to bring about all the confusion we have in the union,” he noted.

Mr Kotei conceded that some WAMCO workers were brought in to take part in the demonstration, but clarified that their involvement was explained in the petition presented to the Ministry.

According to him, some of the workers of WAMCO worked for months without income. This, he said, had resulted in some of them dying while their issues were before the CEO of Cocobod.