Africa-Press – Lesotho. AT least 3 000 workers at the Ace Apparel International factory in Maputsoe were left in the lurch this week after bosses surreptitiously shut down the factory and fled the country.
The workers were due to receive their salaries next week before the Christmas holidays. The company was operating two factories with each employing at 1 500 workers. The factory is owned by two shareholders, one from South Africa, while the other investor is from Australia.
“Their running away has affected the employees emotionally as they are owed salaries and are going to the Christmas holidays without pay,” Labour Minister Tšeliso Mokhosi said.
“We are not happy with what the two investors did,” he said. He said the government has been frantically looking for the factory owners.
“They are nowhere to be found, one is from South Africa while the other comes from Australia,” Mokhosi said.
He said they have since found out that the duo had sold a farm where they were staying in Ficksburg in South Africa. “This shows that they wanted to leave no trace behind,” he said.
He added that they also investigated the factory’s debts to find out if the duo had fled due to their hefty credits “but, it is one of the factories that was performing well, they also pay their employees well, they do not even owe the Revenue Services Lesotho a penny”.
Mokhosi said the two unoccupied factories still have all the necessary equipment to carry on with production. “We also found the newly arrived cloth material that can kick-start production anytime,” he said.
He said together with the Trade Minister Mokhethi Shelile they have decided to call a factory expert today to inspect the factories and see how they can be re-opened.
“The person is the supplier of cloth to the same company,” he said.
He also said they are engaging the expert to run the business so that the workers do not lose jobs and salaries at the same time. He said the workers are owed their salaries and overtime pay.
One of the employees, Pulane Lekhanya, told thepost that they are slowly sinking into depression. “We were surprised on arrival at the workplace on Monday because the locks at the gate were changed,” Lekhanya said.
She said what hurts them most is the fact that it is December and “our children’s clothes are still in the shop as we do lay-byes, how do we get them released?”
She added that she does not even have money to travel back to Thaba-Tseka, her home district. “We were expecting our December salary including overtime.
I am personally expecting to get my M5 000 salary, including my overtime payment. ” She applauded the Sam Matekane-led government for intervening to solve the problem, “but, we are wondering if they will fulfil their promises”.
She said their landlords were already demanding rentals where they stay. The National Clothing, Textile and Allied Workers Union (NACTWU) Deputy Secretary-General Tšepang Makakole said workers found that the owners had fled when they reported for work.
He said the owners changed the locks before fleeing. “It was unfortunate that Monday morning when the employees were reporting for work they found the doors closed and the factory owners were nowhere to be found and their phones were unavailable,” Makakole said.
He added that both NACTWU and the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) are on track to finding them. “We have reported the issue to the government and they are working on finding them,” he said. He said they know that the owners live in South Africa.
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