Workers of Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) have expressed regret that since the completion of planned maintenance works on the refinery in April 2009, the government has not purchased crude oil for the refinery to process. As a result workers who find themselves idle at the refinery production plant through no fault of theirs, fear that they may be laid off by the management. The workers suspect that the plant and the workers are idle because of TOR's indebtedness, a state of affairs that had compelled the government to rely on refined fuel imported by private oil marketing companies (OMCs). But according to Mr Richard Baron Awuleshie, trustee of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union (GTPCW), the indebtedness could be redeemed. For example, he said, the Electricity Company of Ghana and the Volta River Authority (VRA) owed TOR huge sums of money and “something could be done to prevent the refinery from grinding to a halt". He said the recent shortage of premix, LPG and other finished products could have been averted if the refinery were in operation. Mr Awuleshie said the government could bailout the company to enable operations to resume, so TOR could pay it debts. He said the Deputy Minister of Energy, Dr Kwabena Donkor's assertion on a radio station that workers who were impatient could leave TOR's employment "is a dangerous one." Mr Awuleshie recalled that in 2005 when the then government made similar statements, some engineers and technicians left and the government had to replace them with Koreans whose salaries were 20 times those of the Ghanaians. The chairman of the Tema District Council of Labour, Wilson Agana also expressed concern about the situation. "It is like giving a dog on bad name and hanging it," he said. Mr Agana said information reaching them indicated that, allowances of workers had been cut due to the inactivity of the refinery and that they did not want a VODAFONE situation of sending home or undertaking redundancy exercise without any proper package. "We must negotiate on behalf of the workers for a good package if there should be a redundancy exercise at TOR," he said. Dr Kwabena Donkor, Deputy Energy Minister, was alleged to have said on a radio station in Accra yesterday that the government did not intend to lay off workers contending that efforts were being made to import crude oil from Nigeria to enable the refinery to resume work. He was also quoted to have said that any TOR worker who has inpatient and could not wait could leave. Dr Donkor said because of the TOR debt of over GH¢900 million it was becoming very difficult for the Ghana Commercial Bank to open letters of credit for crude oil importation .. The chairman of the Ghana Petroleum Tanker Driver's Union, Paa kwesi Domson, told the Times that, the non-availability of crude oil for the refinery had made tanker drivers redundant. The trustee of GPTDU, George Nyaunu, said the government should cut off completely the oil marketing companies which owed TOR, from lifting oil for other private companies. He said because they continued to lift oil for private companies like SIRUS, SAHARA and CHASE, they were not making any effort to pay their debts. Mr Nyaunu also denied that it was tanker drivers who had been diverting pre-mix fuel. He said the drivers only acted upon the instructions of dealers to carry the pre-mix fuel to where they were directed. He said the National Security apparatus should strengthen its monitoring system to enable pre-mix fuel to get to fishermen. Commenting on the indebtedness of oil marketing companies to TOR, Dr Kwame Ampofo, Chief Executive of the refinery, told the Times that TOR would soon publish a list and details of all OMCS indebted to it. Source: Times/Ghana