Government says it has never been its responsibility to pay the salaries of workers of Ghana International Airline (GIA) and questioned the basis for the attack launched on government by the management and staff of the Airline for the non-payment of their salaries over the last couple of months. A statement signed by the Deputy Minister for Information James Agyenim-Boateng described the workers attack as misdirected, explaining that the responsibility of paying workers salaries has always been a responsibility of the management of the airline. “It is understandable that the management may be facing some challenges as a result of the false-start in the operations of the airline and its mismanagement since its inception. But where they have problems, they should be looking at ways to solve the problems instead of launching attacks on government as a shareholder,” the statement explained. According to the Deputy Minister, government was compelled to ask the Airline to suspend the sale of tickets and its operations because the Airline was unable to finance an aircraft for its operations, while it had sold nearly 9,000 tickets in advance. “That decisive government decision has been followed up by the constitution of a team to ensure that all GIA passengers who have not activated their tickets have their monies refunded while those who have already flown one leg are put on other flights to complete their journeys.” The statement noted that despite selling these tickets and collecting cash payments for them, the GIA management has no funds in its coffers to take care of the ticket refund arrangement. It said government has so far borne the cost of flying stranded passengers to their destinations and is presently working to refund ticket payments for passengers who have not commenced their journeys. That process itself has delayed incredibly because staff of GIA who should provide information and details on passengers, their routing and amount paid for tickets has since the beginning of June not been able to provide the required information, the statement added. “If the Airline, which is a limited liability company, is unable to sustain its operations and pay its staff, why should that difficulty be blamed on government? It will also be interesting to know from the management why it is that after selling nearly 9,000 tickets in advance and collecting cash payments for them, it does not have funds to pay its staff?” the statement concluded. Story by Myjoyonline.com/Ghana