NAMIBIA Wildlife Resorts (NWR), which is undertaking a voluntary retrenchment exercise to cushion itself from Covid-19 related financial challenges, received a N$40 million bailout from treasury last week.
The resorts company wants to offload 250 workers to get to a healthy financial position.
Their financial package is part of N$75 million made available by finance minister Ipumbu Shiimi last week during his budget review.
The remainder of the N$75 million has been allocated to TransNamib to repair the railway line.
Shiimi defended the company’s decision to have a voluntary retrenchment of employees saying it was well within the companys mandate to execute the lay-offs in line with business principles.
“Nobody is forced to go, only those that volunteer to do so,” the finance minister said.
Shiimi stressed that the company has been making losses with the no foreign tourists arriving into the country.
“The company’s bigger source of income is foreign tourists, who, due to the pandemic, could not come to Namibia. This is why the government, which is the only shareholder had to step in,” he said.
NWR said since Covid-19 broke out in the country, the board and management had worked closely with their shareholder to find ways of mitigating the effects of the pandemic and ensuring the sustainability of the company. The company noted that the past six months have been challenging for most Namibian companies.
The pandemic has and is still having an enormous impact on the tourism and aviation-dependent organisations worldwide, and Namibia is not exempted.
NWR managing director Matthias Ngwangwama said the company is grateful to the shareholder for its assistance in the current difficult times.
“The large amount of the funds received is to be re-injected into the Namibian economy through immediately settling overdue suppliers’ invoices. Equally, part of the funds received will be used for our employee costs (our wage bill and the current voluntary separation exercise),” he said.
The last time the company received such financial support from the shareholder was in 2017 when about N$6 million was allocated.
