Rock City’s payment terms, Organised labour objection led to termination of SSNIT Hotels sale – Osafo-Maafo

The Director-General of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), Kofi Bosompem Osafo-Maafo, has clarified that the decision to terminate the sale of the Trust’s 60 percent stake in four hotels to Rock City Hotel was borne out of several factors.

Mr Osafo-Maafo told the host, Bernard Avle on the Citi Breakfast Show, that a major feature of the transaction was broader engagement with the relevant stakeholders and so management listened to the diverse objections against the deal and decided to abrogate the process.

He also disclosed that the unfavourable payment terms by Rock City Hotel which was rejected by the board of SSNIT played a role in the decision to terminate the deal.

“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.”

“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 did not start under his tenure as reported but as far back as 2010.

“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.”

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