AVIC WORKERS REJECT TERMINATION

LINDA SOKO TEMBO writes  ABOUT 40 employees of AVIC International, a road construction company, based in Lilayi Old Airport have refused to terminate their contracts and are demanding to be paid two months’ salary as agreed, one of the employees, Mutinta Chuulabantu has said. Ms Chuulabantu said the company had agreed to pay about 400 workers two months basic salaries for March and April while they waited to resume work after the COVID-19 partial lock down was over. In an interview with the Sun, Ms Chuulabantu explained that to their surprise AVIC advised the workers to terminate their two-year contracts and collect one year gratuity, which they feel is not fair. THE SUN: Tell us what the problem is  Ms Chuulabantu: AVIC wants us to terminate our two years contracts on our own so that we can lose our gratuity money.  Early this year January, the company had gone for an industrial break and management promised that we would resume work before the end of February and they told us that they would pay as a salary during the period we were on break. During this period of COVID-19 pandemic and the strict measures government had put in place we asked the resource manager what would happen us. Management advised us to go back home, those who were living at the office premises were paid K450, some K600 – depending on how much one is paid a day and they were told to leave the camp that was like two months ago because they had worked for a week.   We spoke to management if they could pay us salaries for two months March and April while waiting for the  country to stabilize from the pandemic, they advised that we put it in writing and they agreed and responded. In total we are about 400 workers. Management did not keep their promise they advised the workers to terminate their contracts and about 360 terminated by putting their fingerprint on a paper for proof, while some of us refused because we want to follow the Labour laws.  Management says they have no money for basic salaries but they have money for those who want to terminate the contracts on their own and they will only be given gratuity for last year only. Our gratuities are very little, some are getting K2,500 others K3,000 depending  on  how much they are paid per day which is like K42.00 for some of us.  We had written to management if they could pay us salaries for two months and management agreed but on March month end we only received text messages from NAPSA confirming contributions but we have not seen our salaries.  One of the employees called management asking how far they had gone preparing for the two months basic salaries and they answered that they only had money for those who wanted their contracts terminated. All we want is our two months salaries and they cannot force us to terminate our constructs so that they can pay us less gratuity it is not right. We are engaging the Minister of Labour in this matter. It is unfortunate that many of our colleagues signed to have their contracts terminated, which is not right. Efforts to get a comment from AVIC Lilayi site management proved futile by press time, as Amba, a Chinese national and the human resource personnel Clifford Nunda’s phones were not answered. The Sun