A distressed employee of the Produce Buying Company Limited (PBC), Frederick Kwame Boachie, has revealed that he and his colleagues now rely on their spouses for survival due to the company’s failure to pay their salaries for the past twelve months.
In an interview with adomonline.com on August 8, 2024, Boachie shared that PBC workers are barely managing to support their families.
He emphasized that without their spouses’ financial support, life would have been unbearable, given the prolonged salary delays.
“There are about 750 permanent workers, but almost 30,000, including cocoa clerks. Our wives are the ones taking care of us with the little money from their businesses.
“Some wives who can no longer handle the situation have left their husbands to their fate,” he lamented.
On August 7, 2024, PBC workers demanded the immediate dismissal of the company’s management after staging a protest at the company’s headquarters to demand one year of unpaid salaries.
The Vice Chairman of the PBC Workers Union, Seth Adusei, called on state agencies to investigate the company’s financial troubles and urged the government to dissolve the management board and expedite the payment of the outstanding salaries.
“From the year 2023 to the year 2024, we realised that funding was not coming. First and foremost, it started with our management. We were not getting answers. Then we called on our union leaders, but they were also not coming forward.
“That was why we decided to let us do something about this issue. Not knowing that they were hiding something from us. The chief executive officer, the MD, the deputy chief executive officer in charge of operations, and the deputy chief executive in charge of finance and administration are the executive management; we don’t need them; they can’t help us,” he stated.