FRANCIS AKUMA BOADI AND 85 ORS. V. V.A.L.C.O.
May 18, 2010
HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE (FAST TRACK DIVISION)
GHANA
CORAM
- M.H. LOGOH
Areas of Law
- Employment Law
- Civil Procedure
May 18, 2010
HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE (FAST TRACK DIVISION)
GHANA
CORAM
Try asking the following...
On 17th October, 2008, the Fast Track High Court delivered its judgment in the instant suit. The court was presided over by Her Ladyship Iris May Brown, J.A, sitting as Additional High Court Judge. The judgment was in favour of the Plaintiffs and the following orders were made:
“The court orders the parties herein to proceed in accordance with the orders issued by the Supreme Court to appear before the High Court for that Court to calculate how much is due to the Plaintiffs as follows:
(a) Their salaries from the dates they ceased to receive salaries to the dates of their respective de facto termination.
(b) For all the Plaintiffs additional twelve (12) months’ salary as damages for wrongful dismissal as at the respective dates of de facto termination.
(c) They will be entitled to earned leave allowances, bonuses, long service awards, including food packages and all other benefits, all these are to be converted if feasible into cash as at the respective dates of de facto termination.
(d) Their entitlement under article 40 of the Collective Agreement. In calculating, account should be taken of any period within which an employee had obtained employment within the relevant period covered by that award and any loans obtained from the Company.
(e) Interest is to be paid on amount awarded from the dates of de facto termination of their contract to date of payment.”
Before I proceed any further, I wish to give a brief background of the events that have culminated into this ruling. All the Plaintiffs herein were employees in various departments of the defendant Company. As a result of the droughts in 1982/83, the volume of water in the Volta Dam fell to very dangerous levels. Consequently, production or generation of electric power was adversely affected. Supply of electricity to the Defendant Company was drastically reduced. This compelled the Defendant Company to reduce its operations. Discussions were held between the Defendants and the relevant representatives of the workers. The Defendants suggested a programme whereby workers were made to proceed on leave of absence without pay to be recalled after a period or be declared redundant. The leave of absence without pay package was referred to as Valco leave of absence without pay/recall Programme (L.O.A.). The Leave of Absence (L.O.A.) programme found favour with the workers as against the redundancy provision found in the Collective Agre
AI Generated Summary
Following significant reductions in electricity supply to the Defendant Company during the 1982/83 drought, employees entered a leave-of-absence/recall programme and were ultimately declared redundant when Akosombo’s water levels failed to recover. A 1987 cohort of similarly affected employees (the Abraham Tokoli group) established wrongful dismissal against VALCO in the Supreme Court, with High Court computations later affirmed on appeal. The present Plaintiffs, also former employees of the Defendant Company, successfully invoked estoppel res judicata, and on October 17, 2008 Her Ladyship Iris May Brown, J.A., ordered detailed entitlements, including salaries, twelve months’ damages, benefits, article 40 rights, and interest. When negotiations stalled over the salary base, Justice M.H. Logoh held the court was not functus officio and, following the Tokoli precedent and Afreh J.A.’s method, rejected applying “indices of money depreciation.” He ruled that entitlements must be computed using salaries at the dates of de facto termination and directed calculation accordingly.