Dangote Cement PLC, One of the companies owned by Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has sacked not less than 3,000 of its workers. One of the workers affected who until his dismissal was a senior officer, said himself and former colleagues were sacked from both the Obajana (kogi state) and Ibese (Ogun state) plants. The former staff, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they were all called to pick-up their sack letters. The sacked workers said Dangote declared a profit of N16 per share at his Annual General Meeting (AGM) earlier in the year, added that none of the staff can trace a reason to the development. “Dangote just relieved about 3000 of us our jobs now. It’s very Pathetic here. I never imagined this, I don’t even know what to do now. I’m short of ideas now. No one knows what even leads to that, it was very sudden, We heard it like a rumours over the weekends, and it became a reality on Monday morning, They started from the Ibese station, no one can trace any reason to the mass sack. Because Coronavirus didn’t affect our sales at all.”
Asked if the development may be as a result of a fall in sales, he said, “Loading(sale Operation) is on the high side, that’s the mystery on over the case. Even the ogas here can’t even say this is the cause. It was a matching order from the Headquarters . It’s beyond them, Even our Human Resources officers and Director were just crying, they didn’t understand at all. You can imagined. They said they will pay necessary entitlements .” Another victim of the mass sack said on Friday that he was at his duty post working like usual when he was called and forced to sign a letter of termination of appointment without prior warning or notice. He said, “As I speak to you, more than 3,000 people are being sacked. You will be at your duty post and they will call you and give you a letter, nobody knew, no prior notice.
As a matter of fact, after the appraisal at the start of the year, many of us were given recommendations to be promoted to manager and other positions within the organisation. I was at my duty post, I got a call from the admin and when I got there, they gave me a letter and said I should sign the original collected by me, you cannot argue with anybody. As a matter of fact, the Head of Materials and Maintenance, Engr Basil, he has only nine people in his unit. He force them to cover the whole of the facility because they have to create evaluations for materials and make reservations for maintainace so when was asked to submit the names of nine people in his department to sack, when he refused explaining to upper management that he was already understaffed and taking out anyone will make the work to suffer. They gave him an ultimatum of 24 hours to submit names from his team for sack and when he refused to do it after it elapsed, he was sacked along with his team.”
He added that staff members at the company were not allowed to belong to trade unions and any attempt to do so would lead to mass sack. “We are not allowed to have any union, the day anyone starts it is the day we will all go. You cannot try it at all,” he said. He expressed worry that many staff may not get paid for the overtime hours they put in for June.
“Overtime is usually paid the next month, now we are worried that we might not get paid for the overtime we did in June despite the pandemic. Because of the way the company works, we are even worried that they may not even be paid June salary,” he added.
In a letter of termination signed by Adeniyi Azeez, Head of Human Resources and Administration, sacked staff were told that the process of the payment will be communicated with no specific date indicated. “Our payroll is currently working out your final financial entitlements and this would be communicated to you during the off boarding process,” The letter reads.
Letter of termination.
