Ex-Staff Of GN Savings And Loans Write To Receiver Over Non-Payment Of provident Fund

Former staff of Groupe Nduom Savings and Loans Limited (GN Savings and Loans) has written to the receiver of the company requesting payment of their Provident Fund which is locked up with the collapsed microfinance company.

A 9th August 2021 letter to Mr. Eric Nana Nipah of PriceWaterHouseCoopers, from the leadership of the “Concerned Ex-Staff of GN Savings And Loans” lamented bitterly that the ex-workers have been forced to endure serious hardships over the past 24 months due to the non-payment of their provident fund.

“We plead with you to help us resolve this protracted hardship inflicted on us (the innocent ex-staff of GN Savings and Loans),” the letter partly said.

It is coming over a year after the receiver had announced in 2020 that the Bank of Ghana had decided to pre-finance all entitlements of workers with banks and microfinance institutions whose licenses had been revoked in a 2018 financial sector clean up by the government.

That promise in July 2020 had come after the ex-workers of GN Savings and Loans had then pleaded with the receiver for settlement of their entitlements. 

The 9th July 2021 letter lamented that the leadership of the ex-staff had been told by a point man that they were directed to contact somebody else.

“The leadership of the concerned Ex-staff of GN Savings and Loans met with Mr. Leo Sam on 15th June 2021 to follow up on our locked up provident fund (PF) following the revocation of the bank’s license. We made representation on behalf of the Ex-Staff that the non-payment of the PF is creating extreme hardship for us and our families especially when most of us still remain unemployed for the past 24 months,” the letter read.

According to the letter, Ex staff are deeply concerned that they were not given any timelines for the payment of their provident Fund. “We have waited for close to two years for this matter to be settled but it appears that there is no end in sight. This situation is extremely unbearable.”

In 2019, The Bank of Ghana revoked the licenses of 347 Microfinance Companies and that of 23 Savings and Loans and Finance House Companies in 2019, citing insolvency, mismanagement, and fraud in some cases.

The exercise was part of the financial sector clean-up by the central bank which also saw some eight banks losing their licenses between 2017 and 2019.

The government justified the cleansing exercise, arguing the banks would have, otherwise, collapsed, and with them, the deposits of more than a million clients.

The GN Savings and Loans was one of the institutions affected.