The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) and Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST) workers’ unions have denied media reports suggesting they recorded a loss in revenue of GHS32 million between January and September this year.
The two unions at a joint press conference described the media report as palpable fabrications calculated at “tainting the public image of well-performing state corporations like BOST and TOR”.
The two unions unanimously on behalf of the workers TOR and BOST denied media publication on December 20, 2016, under the headline: “BOST post 32 million cedis loss from fuel trading business losses between January and September 2016”.
Mr John Elton Botwey, Chairman of the General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union at TOR, addressing the media said “BOST trading business has never been in the red since the company started trading.
He said “BOST will declare its end of year profit in a few days as it does every BOST year- and needless to emphasis again, that even just last year, we made a profit of 124 million cedis for the nation”.
Mr Botwey flanked by Mr Abdul Rahman, Chairman of BOST Senior Staff Union, and Mr Bernard Owusu, National Chairman General Transport, Petroleum and Chemical Workers Union.
He said contrary to some series of publications aimed at watering down the quality of progress TOR and BOST had made in recent years, under the leadership of Mr Kwame Awuah Darko, the Managing Director, fuel security has improved with consistent fuel supply for the past 30 months.
Ghana they said saved $1.1 billion under 12 months of deregulating fuel price which according to them would have gone into consumption of fuel as subsidy under, price deregulation, had it not been BOST and TOR.
The unions said achievements made included government’s effective control of the supply side of the market forces under deregulation, helping to do away with emergency cargoes by the Bulk Distribution Companies (BDCs).
TOR’s production, they said, has been boosted from 28,000/bpd a day to 45,000bpd and its expected to do 60,000bpd with the commercialization of F61.
Mr Botwey said as a result of the synergy between BOST and TOR, there was about 100 million US dollars cut in importation of finished petroleum product for each month.
The unions also refuted some allegations leveled against the companies in connection with the evaluation report for repair of storage tanks.
“That document in circulation is incomplete, has no signature, and has not been approved, TOR did a departmental estimate on the cost of repairing the tanks and that estimated amount is higher than the proposed winning cost of the contract in the incomplete evaluation report.
“Therefore, the document being quoted and circulated is not a valid document worth relying on,” they said.
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