The General Secretary for the Food and Beverages Manufacturers Association, Samuel Aggrey, has disclosed that more than 1500 staff of the respective breweries in the country will be laid off by the end of October 2018.

In an interview with Accra-based Starr FM, Mr Aggrey said that over 1200 workers have already been dismissed due to the economic hardship the country is facing under the Akufo-Addo led government.

“It didn’t start from now, it started early part of this year, some companies have already laid off their staff and others have even shut down some of their plants completely.”

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“Some supermarkets have laid off staff and all that…and we told the government that the way we are going we have to be very careful because if you stifle people with more taxes and once you doing that it will create a big problem,” Mr Aggrey added.

He further stated that “I know about a company that shut down its whole plant and it affected 1200 workers…this happened somewhere in April.”

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He explained that the brewery industry will lay off more workers due to the government’s handling of the implementation of the tax stamp policy.

“Take the number of production lines that we have or the factories and then look at the big lines that they produce, what it means is that if you don’t have about 1,500 layoffs then it could be more. Because even those producing about 5000 are not breaking even…but you see if you have a government that is not listening to the industry this is what happens.”