Tantalite mine retrenchments finalised

KEETMANSHOOP, 04 SEP  – The 94 Namibia Tantalite Mine employees in Warmbad set to lose their jobs in June this year were finally retrenched on Friday, 31 August 2018, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Larry Johnson confirmed.
The mine announced in June that it would retrench the 94 employees out of a total 105 employees because of a water shortage and lack of production at the mine.
An agreement on severance packages took about two months as the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN) and the mine struggled to reach an agreement.
In a statement to Nampa on Monday, Johnson said the mine “sadly announces the retrenchment of some of its employees”, adding that the company “did all it could before having had to take the difficult decision to retrench”.
“I assure that we have first and foremost followed the labour laws and used third-party labour experts as well as legal practitioners that are resident experts in labour to ensure that we followed the entire process,” Johnson stated.
He further said negotiations were done and concluded in good faith with MUN.
“The mine would like to express its sincere gratitude to all the employees for their time and commitment at the mine,” he said.
Meanwhile, MUN on Monday slammed the mine for going ahead with the retrenchment exercise and called on the government to revoke the licence of the mine. The union argued that negotiations between the mine, the Ministry of Mines and Energy and MUN were not yet finalised.
The mine earlier announced that it would recruit a skeleton crew consisting of 10 to 20 people once the retrenchments were done. – NAMPA