Opinions of Tuesday, 10 May 2005

Columnist: Ohene Agyin

Ghana Airways Workers: If only the vulture knew....

If only the vulture knew how bald it is, says an adage in our language, it would shut up in public. That is what employees of the defunct Ghana airways should do. If only they knew how much hatred passengers of the airline harbored for them, they wouldn't dare show their faces in public to whine about their jobs and welfare.

The latest call from the much-hated employees is on the president to fire the Minister of Roads and Transportation, Richard Anane, for failing to "facilitate the improvement of their welfare ." What a load of crap. Since when did the term "welfare" start creeping into their lexicon? Have they soon forgotten the way they treated customers of their airline?

Severance? Only in Ghana do workers get reward on their way out after they have brought their company down. And they have the guts to register their displeasure against the delay in reaching an agreement on that. Now they must feel how their passengers felt when their flights were delayed for no reason other than incompetence and arrogance.

If you are suffering and your kids are staying at home because they've been sacked from school, whose fault is it? For decades you looted and pilfered the company that was responsible for your lives to its demise. You did all you could to make prospective passengers, the sole paying partners in the business, to change their minds about boarding any of your planes. For decades you treated us like dirt, more so like leppers and beggars and not paying passengers. Now you see how bad it is to lose your job when you delayed workers returning to their host countries to go to work. Most of them lost their jobs because they were days, and even weeks, late from returning to work. You had no remorse for all you did because you came to work the day after to do the same thing.

By the way, what did you do with all the bribe money you collected when the going was good for you and your airline? I guess it's all gone. Time changes, no doubt. Maybe the government will reward you with severance for bankrupting the airline, but how long will it last?

If Anane is dead and heading for Awudome Cemetery, you are all waiting in line to rot in hell one day for the suffering you heaped on our heads. I don't want to recount my experience with your insensitivity because everybody knows it already. All I'll say is I lost a great career job and for the past five years I've been working odd jobs just to get by. I hope every one of you would suffer the same fate. That is not very far into the future.

Stop playing victim. You deserve whatever is coming to you. You should have thought of your jobs and your children when you shut your ears to common sense and acted in arrogance. Leave Anane alone.



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