The Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Kofi Bosompem Osafo-Maafo, has stated that management and board of the Trust will listen engage Organised Labour on the way forward after a decision to sell six hotels was terminated.

Organised Labour on Friday July 12, 2024 threatened a nationwide strike if the management and board of SSNIT do not terminate the move to sell the hotels.

The Board Chairman of SSNIT, Elizabeth Ohene subsequently issued a statement announcing the abrogation of the decision.

Mr. Osafo-Maafo has admitted that the decision to terminate the sale was taken to avert the strike and engage labour on the issue.

“My message to Organised Labour is that the management and board of the Trust will continue to work very hard to manage the assets that we are responsible for very prudently. We are listening and we will continue to engage. That is the main point”, he said in an interview on Accra-based Citi FM on Monday, July 15, 2024.

He assured that SSNIT will work hard to prudently manage the assets and risks to ensure that the Trust is sustained in the long term.

The decision to terminate the process

Mr. Osafo Maafo stated that after considering various objections to the deal, the management decided to terminate the process. 

Additionally, he revealed that the board of SSNIT rejected Rock City Hotel's (One of the companies which wanted to buy the hotels) unfavourable payment terms, which also contributed to the decision to terminate it.

“We listened to the objections from the stakeholders and we decided to terminate the process. If you remember, when we had the press conference, we said we would engage all the stakeholders and we have been doing that since then. The unions have also been vociferous and we listened to their demands and decided to terminate the process.”

“My team and I met with the unions and the Labour and Employment Minister and we had two engagements with the NPRA, so there has been continuous engagement and where we are now, we are all seeking the same objective, which is to improve the revenue of the hotels,” he added. 

Mr Osafo-Maafo added that the SSNIT management also had concerns with the payment terms proposed by Rock City Limited.

“We went into a negotiation process; it was the management and board of SSNIT that rejected the terms of payment…The terms of payment were the subject of the negotiation, and therefore we sought to continue the negotiation to reach a solution that was acceptable.”

“During that process, the unions raised the same objection that they were not in favour of the terms of payment, and indeed, they extended that they were not in favour at all.”

He added that the process of divesting SSNIT's shares in the hotels began as far back as 2010, not under his tenure as reported.

“We don’t think that we left it too late, there were businesses that we have had since 2010.

This process started as far back as 2010, when the board invited in investors and then in 2017, and then in 2018 the board directed that we go in to find strategic investors and the process traveled through to 2022.”