APS workers feel pinch

WITH the deadline for labour-hire companies to be declared illegal fast approaching, the Trade Centre in Windhoek yesterday let go of about 35 workers under contract to them from Africa Personnel Services (APS).

The workers yesterday demonstrated outside the Trade Centre building in protest, claiming they were only informed of their dismissals on Wednesday.
The workers expressed dismay over the fact that some of them had been employed at the Trade Centre for up to six years before having their services terminated yesterday.
However, APS spokesperson Johannes Kapembe rejected the workers’ claims of short notice, saying they had been informed and signed letters of acknowledgement on December 15 already.
‘It is true that some of them refused to sign, but there is no doubt that they were informed timeously,’ Kapembe said.
He said the dismissal was because of the ban on labour hire in the new Labour Act, which comes into effect on March 1. After this date, all labour-hire companies will be illegal.
‘It was not an APS decision,’ he maintained.
APS, he said, is still appealing a High Court judgement delivered against it in December, after it challenged the constitutionality of the 2007 Labour Act.
‘Of course, we don’t know if that appeal will be successful,’ he said.
When The Namibian yesterday spoke to the dismissed workers, they claimed that Trade Centre had appointed new people in their positions.
‘What we can’t accept is that they would fire us and bring in new people. Some of us have been working here forever,’ said Dorka Tjikongo.
Officials spoken to at the Trade Centre declined to comment, saying it was an APS matter.
Trade Centre is said to have placed a number of other APS workers who had been working there on its own payroll.
The dismissed workers said they are not represented by any trade union.