Tema Shipyard and Drydock Company receives GH¢13.5m boost
Tema Shipyard and Drydock Company Limited has received a major boost with the injection of GH¢13.5 million from the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) to enhance the effective operation of the company.
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The money, which is refundable, will be used for the procurement of needed logistics for use at the facility.
Briefing Members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, the Director General of the GPHA, Mr Paul Asare Ansah, expressed the hope that the injection of capital would reposition the shipyard as a major player in Ghana’s drydock industry.
Bailout
The GPHA has been the backbone of the shipyard after it recently bailed out the facility from a Malaysian investment by paying $6,860,000 and an additional $500,000 to the Strategic Investment Advisors after negotiations between the governments of Malaysia and Ghana to abrogate the investment contract.
This allowed the transfer to Ghana of 60 per cent of the shipyard's equity previously held by a Malaysian company since 2011.
Mr Ansah said given the drydock’s important role in the past, the management of GPHA believed that the company could reclaim its market position as the leading drydock hub in West Africa.
He explained that the new approach by the company was to revamp the ship building capacity as well as open up the facility to carry out fabrication works to make the company financially sound.
Integration
It would be recalled that workers of the drydock recently petitioned the government to fully implement a previous cabinet decision taken in June 2016 to fully transfer the operations of the shipyard to GPHA in a bid to revive it.
The petition, jointly signed by Messrs Christian Dogbee and Samuel Attram, Chairmen of the Professional and Managerial Staff Union (PMSU) and the Local Union respectively, said fast-tracking the integration would bring enormous benefit to the country.
The workers revealed that since that announcement was made which saw GPHA coming on board last year, not less than 15 vessels had called at the facility to be worked on.
They, therefore, expressed the hope that the government would finalise the integration process of the facility to help solve some of the challenges facing the shipyard.
The Parliamentary Select Committee on Trade, Industry and Tourism, led by its Chairman, Mr Daniel Nii Kwartei Titus-Glover, was at the offices of the GPHA to familiarise itself with the operations of the ports.
Mr Titus-Glover pledged the readiness of the committee to work with the management and offer them the needed support for them to realise their objectives.
Members of the committee later toured the facility to have a first hand knowledge of its operations.
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