Africa-Press – Botswana. Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU) has called for the suspension of Lucara managing director and further institute an inquiry into her conduct.
This emerged during petition to the chairman of the board of Lucara Botswana (PTY) LTD on Saturday in Letlhakane.
Delivering the petition BMWU deputy general Secretary, Mr Kabelo Maano, said the petition was based on unlawful termination of three security personnel of Lucara by Lucara Botswana managing director Mrs Nassim Lahri.
The termination he said followed allegations of maladministration and breach of business conduct and ethics by top executive members of management.
Dismissals he said triggered a series of actions by managing director and management team, purposed to cover up allegation against them, including among other things nepotism, abuse of office, misappropriation and misuse of company assets, maladministration and embezzlement of funds.
He said security department generated a lot of interest within the executive committee, which led to subsequent optimisation which had and was intended to purge the 47 security personnel who participated in the security investigation commissioned by Lucara Diamond Corp.
He further stated that Mrs Lahri to date summarily dismissed four employees without a hearing; first being an employee of engineering department, and most recently three security personnel.
The employees he said were dismissed in the same unlawful and unjust fashion, and the commonality of the said dismissals was that all employees were at some point or another involved in raising red flags on mismanagement of company resources or unethical conduct of some managers.
Mr Maano indicated that they had seen an incident where an employee was unlawfully dismissed following his report on suspicion of corruption, flouting procurement processes and lack of due diligence in sourcing external equipment, which he believed did not fit the specifications of what the company was paying for.
The managing director, he said had continued her path of questionable conduct by dismissing three security employees who took part in a departmental review process.
He noted that employees volunteered their statements or evidence, under protection of whistle blowing policy in a recent investigation carried out in the security department which led to the resignation of the security manager.
He said after investigation of security department, the company notified the union of an optimization exercise intended to enhance efficiency and integration of new technologies into the work stream, the exercise he alleged was intended to expel whistle blowers of security department.
He stated that managing director convinced the board that there was a business case to downsize the department fronting her reasoning with a fallacy that the security system in place were optimal and capable of taking over tasks performed by employees.
Mr Maano invited the board chairman to conduct his own evaluation and establish if the decision to retrench was justified.
As part of the security optimization and shift of operational philosophy, he said they had been notified that the core function of the new ways of work would be surveillance review which would be fully outsourced to South Africa.
He indicated the current security team had competent personnel who could perform the functions as they had been doing over the years.
He said outsourcing soft skills that were abundant in the current workforce and locally to a foreign company was against the objectives of National Employment Policy for Botswana (2021), which seeks to strengthen private sector creation of employment for Batswana.
Receiving the petition on behalf of the board chairperson, Lucara Botswana general manager, Mr Johane Mchive stated that BMWU and Lucara had a relationship and agreement which needed to be nurtured and enhanced for the benefit of the collective.
He assured them that the petition would be handed over to the board chairperson for response and feedback.
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