In a judgement handed down on Tuesday, Judge Annel Silungwe ordered the NBC to take account of the years the former NBC employees had worked at the South West African Broadcasting Corporation (SWABC), when it calculates the retrenchment payouts the 22 should receive after they accepted voluntary retrenchment in early 2003.

Judge Silungwe's ruling might not lay the dispute to rest, though.

The corporation plans to appeal against the judgement, the NBC's General Manager: Administration, Human Resources and Logistics, Teofe Karipi, said yesterday.

The case was brought by employees who opted to accept a voluntary retrenchment exit package in early 2003.

Leading figures among the 22 were Adriaan Kruger and August Bikeur, who had worked at the SWABC before it evolved into the NBC, since June 1980 and October 1979 respectively.

Kruger yesterday said he saw Judge Silungwe's ruling as a rebuke that should serve as a reminder to employers that they should refrain from taking one-sided decisions affecting employees' benefits, as if these employees were mere consumer articles.

They had gone through a David-versus-Goliath contest with the NBC, and were elated to have won, he said.

When it offered the voluntary retrenchment packages, the NBC also informed staff members that their retrenchment payouts would include two weeks' salary for each year of service.

Some time after that, the corporation however went on to inform people who wanted to accept the voluntary retrenchment that only the years of service completed at the NBC after Independence would be taken into account.

Having already had their applications to accept retrenchment approved by the NBC, both Kruger and Bikeur refused to sign retrenchment agreements which, according to the NBC, would have meant that prior years of service with the SWABC would not be taken into account for the calculation of their retrenchment pay-outs.

Their 20 co-applicants claimed that they had accepted it as a matter of course that their service with the SWABC would be taken into account.

Neither the initial retrenchment notices nor the settlement agreements the NBC required the former employees to sign featured any explanation that the term "years of service with the NBC" referred exclusively to years of service after Namibia's Independence, thereby excluding years of service with the SWABC, Judge Silungwe noted.

He stated that he had been convinced that when the 22 applied for voluntary retrenchment, they were not aware that their years of service with the SWABC would be excluded from the calculation of their retrenchment payouts.

No documentary evidence to support the NBC's version on this score had been placed before the court through an affidavit from Karipi, the Judge stated.

He had no hesitation in finding that the NBC had failed to prove that it had been explained beforehand to the former employees that only post-Independence years of service would be considered.

Judge Silungwe remarked that he was satisfied that the NBC's limitation of the years of service to those performed after Independence was a unilateral decision that had possibly been influenced by a belief that such a decision could be taken in a voluntary retrenchment exercise.

"In reality, however, there was here no settlement, let alone a voluntary one, between the parties (or with the applicants' full knowledge of its terms and implication)," he stated.

Judge Silungwe ordered the NBC to recalculate the retrenchment packages to include the years of service with both the NBC and SWABC, and to conclude this within 14 days from Tuesday.

The former employees were represented by Zagrys Grobler, on instructions from Legal Shield Namibia.

Dave Smuts SC acted for the NBC, on instructions from Ellis & Partners.

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