COURT ORDERS YEA TO PAY DISMISSED STAFF

An Accra High court has ordered the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), to compensate some ten (10) workers it laid off unfairly.
The court ruled that the plaintiffs were unfairly dismissed, and charged the agency to pay their salary arrears with interest from 2012 to date.
The judgment was given in favour of one David Quarshie and nine others who commenced the legal action.

Note;
• The YEA will appeal against this ruling in the coming days.

• This case in contention did not happen under this current regime. It happened under the NDC.

Background

• After a change in the leadership of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency now YEA, when Kobby Acheampong took over from Abuga Pele in 2012, the contracts of a number of workers were terminated.

• David Quashie and his colleagues argued that after serving as paid interns for more than two years, an opportunity opened for the recruitment of regular staff which they applied for, were interviewed and consequently appointed.

• Their appointments were endorsed by either the then-Executive Director of the GYEEDA, Abuga Pele or the then-Chief Director of the Ministry of Youth and Sports Alhaji Abudulai Yakubu.

• But the YEA in response claimed the plaintiffs were wrongly interviewed and that they should not have been employed.

• The Authority also claimed that the plaintiffs had gotten their jobs through foul means and were unqualified hence the dismissal.

• But the workers successfully argued that they had no knowledge of the internal considerations that went into their appointments.

• The agency was ordered to pay general damages of GHc 6,000 to each Plaintiff and a cost of GHc 30,000.

• The group sued the YEA, then the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Agency, over the unfair dismissals between November 2012 to August 2014.

• The court action came after the National Labour Commission (NLC) in 2015 directed YEA to pay an amount of GHc455,364 to the staff for wrongfully terminating their contracts.