OMAHEKE governor Festus Ueitele on Monday called on the government to consider re-opening the Witvlei Meat abattoir which was closed in January, leaving 160 people jobless.
This comes after the former Ministry of Trade and Industry reduced Witlvei Meat’s export quota to Norway from 800 tonnes to 300 tonnes.
The company took the issue to court in a bid to force the ministry to restore that quota, but lost the case.
The company later tried to get a court interdict to stop Meat Corporation of Namibia (Meatco) from exporting their 800 tonnes allocation of beef to Norway, but failed again. After the retrenchments, Witvlei launched another court case, this time against Nortura, a company in Norway, which they claim had been underpaying them by about N$41 million.
Company chairperson Sidney Martin told The Namibian in February that the case is still pending in the High Court in Oslo, Norway, and should it be concluded, the money gained will be used to pay the workers their retrenchment packages.
Ueitele on Monday described the abattoir as the region’s diamond as it is the biggest employer and appealed to the government to ensure that the operations of the abattoir continue, pending the Norway court case results.
He said he had met the former minister of trade, Calle Schlettwein, after the company sent workers home in January and they decided to wait for the case to be concluded before deciding the fate of the company and its workers.
“The abattoir is the region’s main source of income. We do not have fish or minerals. The cattle and the abattoir are our diamonds. For our people’s sake, let us have this company running again,” appealed Ueitele.
Schlettwein, now minister of finance, had hit out at the company for using the Norwegian quota as their backbone for the abattoirs’ operations, while there are other companies in Europe and the Southern African Development Community they could export beef to.
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