Africa-Press – Namibia. CHINESE company Avic Intl Project Engineering, which is constructing part of the Windhoek-Hosea Kutako International Airport highway, says it has resolved a dispute with its workers over tax deductions.
The dispute has led to the company’s workers downing their tools last week.
Project manager Wei Qiang Ding says the company has paid back the workers, and the workers have since returned to work.
The employees have accused the company of deducting money from their salaries and not handing it over to the revenue authorities.
Ding on Thursday said the company has deducted the money from the workers’ pay, and has paid it to the Namibia Revenue Agency (Namra) although it could not be allocated to individual workers because they have not been allocated individual tax numbers.
He said the amount involved was about N$1,8 million, which was deducted from 240 workers’ salaries over a period of three tax years.
“We are not running away from paying tax. We did not steal the money as some people are claiming,” he said.
The company has initiated the process of registering the workers as taxpayers, but there has been delays in completing the exercise as a result of the consultant the company hired and bureaucracy at the Namra office, Ding said.
A copy of an unstamped Namra domestic tax department transaction record, dated 7 May 2022 shows that Avic-Intl Project Engineering Company has made employee tax payments over the years, although none of the employees concerned were identified.
Ding said these payments could not be allocated to individual accounts because the workers did not have PAYE5 tax numbers.
“We did it so that when they are eventually registered as taxpayers, they would not be owing the tax authorities anything,” he said.
After the industrial action by the disgruntled workers, the company resolved to reimburse the workers with the amounts that were deducted from their salaries, but as loans to be repaid when Namra eventually registers the workers and allocates them individual accounts.
“Namra will allocate what we have already paid to them to individual workers’ accounts, and the workers will have to pay the company the money that has been paid back to them as loans,” he said.
A contract signed between the company and one of its workers on 11 May shows he was allocated a N$39 485,55 loan to be repaid in three monthly payments once employees are issued their PAYE5 certificates.
The employee will make repayments of N$13 61,85 a month for three months after all other normal payroll deductions, such as for social security and PAYE, have been accounted for.
The contract said should the borrower leave the company before repaying the loan in full, the outstanding amounts would be recovered from any terminal benefits due to the employee.
Ding said the workers incorrectly believed Avic was deducting money from their salaries and keeping it instead of paying it to Namra.
“We ended up blaming each other,” he said, adding that when the registration is completed, the workers would still be expected to pay tax on the money they have earned so far.
The construction of the Windhoek-Hosea Kutako International Airport highway started in March 2020 and was initially scheduled to take 36 months, but due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this deadline has been extended.
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