Former TCL miners won’t give up

FORMER TCL workers at odds with the country’s financial supervisory body, Namfisa, are picketing on the pavement in front of the High Court in Windhoek.

They set up camp there on Monday morning and have delivered petitions to the head offices of Namfisa, the Ministry of Finance, Momentum Life Assurance, and Alexander Forbes Financial Services.The approximately 100 elderly men represent a larger group of former workers of the defunct Tsumeb Corporation Limited, who have spent the better part of the last decade in search of the money they say they were supposed to be paid out upon the liquidation of TCL in 1998.All involved in the liquidation process have maintained that the approximately N$116,9 million contained in the pension fund at the time was used in the liquidation.The workers, however, claim that their employer had no business touching the money, and say that the four entities, as well as the man responsible for the liquidation of the fund, Bob Meiring, owe them N$470 000, with interest added. Monday’s action was the fourth demonstration by the group in the past two years. So far, their efforts have been futile.The group has vowed to keep up the protest until May 1, after which they intend to take the matter to court, spokesman Lehman Sethie told The Namibian yesterday.The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Finance, Calle Schlettwein, who received the group’s petition on Monday, promised them a reply within a week.The petition calls for Namfisa ‘to take the necessary steps to bring all the parties together to discuss the immediate return of our pension fund surplus’.Most of the demonstrators are currently employed at mines at Tsumeb, Kombat and Otjihase, which recently suspended all mining activities as a result of a drop in the world copper price.