Energy Minister asks AGC workers to exercise restraint
US introduces new software for Africa's Y2K Energy Minister asks AGC workers to exercise restraint
Obuasi (Ashanti Region) 19 May ’99
Mr Fred Ohene-Kena, Minister of Mines and Energy has called on striking workers of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC) to exercise restraint and wait for the outcome of new negotiations between their union and the AGC management.
Mr Ohene-Kena made the call at a meeting at Obuasi on Monday to find solution to the industrial action by the workers who are demanding pay increases.
The meeting was attended by Mrs. Joana Appiah-Dwomoh, Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister, Brigadier Kofi Anyidoho, second Infantry Brigade Commander, Mr George Adu-Mensah, Adansi West District Chief Executive as well as the management of AGC and union executives.
The Minister advised the workers to always opt for dialogue in resolving industrial matters instead of embarking on strike action.
Mr Ohene-Kena, who is also a member of the company's board of directors asked the workers to consider investments AGC is making in other African countries as long-term profit-making ventures in their interest and appealed to them to see eye to eye with their management in times of crisis.
Mrs. Appiah-Dwomoh assured the workers that the government is sensitive to their plight and that they should resume work while they wait for the outcome of the re-negotiations.
But in spite of the appeals, the striking workers are insisting that they would return to work only when they have been give pay increments.
Miss Adelaide Borden, union secretary, told the workers that the re-negotiations cannot be conducted in an atmosphere of threat and that they should go back to work.
Meanwhile, the strike action took a dramatic turn when wives of the workers took to the streets in solidarity of their husbands.
Dressed in their husbands working gear and wearing red bands, the women sang songs calling on Mr Sam Jonah, chief executive of the AGC to give their husbands the needed pay rise.
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US introduces new software for Africa's Y2K
Accra (Greater Accra) 19 May ’99
The United States Deputy Secretary of Commerce, Mr Robert Mallet, on Tuesday introduced a new computer software that can be used by companies in Africa to manage the millennium bug problem.
Otherwise known as Y2K, the millennium bug is a computer programming flaw that could cause computer systems and other electronic devices programmed to record date information in two digits instead of four to malfunction or completely shut down at the turn of year 2000.
Mr Mallet said "we all live in a global economy that is increasingly inter-connected by complex electronic networks.
"It is, therefore, important that all countries work together to ensure that the commercial inter-dependencies that bind economies together are not disrupted by the millennium bug," Mr Mallet told a well-attended session on Y2K at the African-African American Conference in Accra.
The Conference, the Fifth of its kind to be held in Africa, has brought together over 5,000 delegates including government officials, private business concerns and tourists.
According to Mr Mallet, who controls a 16 billion-dollar budget department of the US, the Y2K presents the single serious technology challenge to the World.
The US and Africa have a stake in ensuring that the Y2K problem does not become the first global economic crisis of the next century.
Mr Mallet said the US government is particular about the problem in Africa because research has proved that many small and medium scale businesses dotted across Africa are vulnerable to the problem.
"We will, therefore, do everything possible within our resources to build linkages with these businesses that are mostly in the private sector to ensure smooth transition".
Aviation transportation, the financial sector and the telecommunication industry are some of the areas with international dimension, which are most likely to suffer from the bug in Africa.
But, Ghana is particularly worried about the petroleum industry, which is considered as the most critical area.
"We are concerned about the petroleum sector because of the high dependency of the Ghanaian economy on that sector," Commander P.M.G. Griffiths, a deputy Minister of Communications, said at the session.
The energy crisis of 1998 is enough experience for the country to guard against future occurrence.
"We cannot afford it (energy crisis) to happen again. That area is the mainstay of the economy and that a contingency plan must ensure that a disruption does not occur," he said.
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