GBEVLO LARTEY STRIKES AT KIA

…over 600 jobs set to be on line
Posted: The Chronicle Thursday, June 25, 2009

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
Tension is mounting at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) as private security companies currently operating at the airport face a possible termination of their contracts with their respective clients.
Credible sources at the airport have hinted The Chronicle of a directive issued by the National Security Coordinator, Lt. Col. Gbevlo Lartey (Rtd) to the various state institutions operating at the airport not to renew the existing contracts they have with the various private companies.
Not long after the directive was issued, Gbevlo Lartey was said to have issued another one asking the companies involved to terminate existing contracts with some of these private companies.
One of such companies being affected by this directive is Magnum Force Security Company Limited (MFS), a fully-Ghanaian owned private security company who has been holding the fort at the Arrival and Departure Halls amongst other sensitive areas at the airport for the past two and half years.
Though the company has managed to bring and maintain sanity to the international airport, Ghana’s first point of call which was once bedeviled with serious issues of theft, the National Security is said to be exerting excessive pressure on companies including Ghana Airport Company Limited (GACL), Ghana Civil Aviation Authorities (GCAA) and Aviance formally AFGO to terminate their contract without reason.
In all this, the National Security Coordinator who happens to be the main architect, has not offered any tangible reason why MFS’s and for that matter any of the private security companies should not remain at KIA.
Meanwhile, Gbevlo Lartey is said to be preparing the grounds to bring back the former private security company, Elite Security, a company he has a stake in, which used to be one of the many private security companies at KIA before Magnum Force bided and won the tender on merit from among nine other bidders in the year 2006 to take over security operations at the airport.
At the time MFS won the contract, there was a lot of talk and controversy from members of the then New Patriotic Party (NPP) government, surrounding the selection of the company because the Managing Director was known to have worked with the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government.
It is however not clear why the company is suffering this fate under the new administration.
If the directive is carried out to the letter, it is feared that well over 350 individual jobs are likely to be loss under Magnum Force alone, not to talk about the remaining companies who may be equally suffering a similar fate.
This is likely to have a telling effect on the already highly approaching economic crunch, with a bearing consequence on unemployment.
To a large extent, this will surely be a variance to President Mills’ much-avowed promise of job creation considering the fact that it stifles local business initiatives.
The situation has compelled some individuals and group of persons operating at the airport to raise questions about the prudence of any such decision since it appears to be like ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’.
But Lt. Col. Gbevlo Lartey is not forthcoming with information on the issue.
When The Chronicle contacted him to ascertain the truth or otherwise of the said directive, he feigned knowledge of it.
Instead of answering the substantive question of whether or not he indeed issued such a directive, he sought to know the papers source of information.