Africa-Press – Namibia. CHOPPIES Supermarket last week terminated an agreement for the provision of personnel services with a company owned by Tsumeb constituency councillor Gottlieb Ndjendjela.
The agreement was signed between Choppies Supermarket and the councillor’s company Employee Placement Services Namibia in December 2019.
Ndjendjela confirmed to The Namibian yesterday that the contract, expected to come to an end in December this year, was terminated because of allegations of sexual harassment made against one of the supermarket’s managers at Outapi.
“The parties agreed after the allegations of sexual harassment and a lot of things at Outapi. I have to take up that issue from my side with the management of Choppies,” says Ndjendjela.
“… and these Affirmative Repositioning (AR) stories, I am not saying they were protecting the employees. I feel they did not do anything,” he said.
He added that the supervisor who was accused of sexually harassing employees was transferred from Choppies Outapi to another Choppies branch. He claimed that when the employees at Outapi supermarket reported the allegations to him, another two reported that one employee had allegedly had a miscarriage, while another had resigned.
According to Ndjendjela, this happened because the supervisor was allegedly mistreating employees.
Ndjendjela denied that employees were paid N$750 per month and that he was taking portions of their salaries. He said employees were getting paid between N$1 600 and N$2 600 per month.
According to a cashier’s employment contract, an employee earns N$850 as a monthly salary, and N$850 in monthly overtime. They work from 07h00 to 20h00. Shelf packers earn N$750 in monthly salary, and overtime of N$750. They also work from 07h00 to 20h00 every day.
On Wednesday, AR’s Benedick Louw in a statement said the termination of agreement between Choppies and Ndjendjela’s company means that Choppies employees are now “liberated from Ndjendjela’s colonialism”.
“Gone are the days of talk, talk and talk with no tangible results, as businesses continue to collude with a corrupt regime to perpetuate the economic oppression of our people,” Louw said.
Choppies Supermarket country manager Vysakh Thekkepatt could not explain why exactly the agreement was terminated.
“Unfortunately, I can’t say anything because the CEO has to give me a go-ahead to brief the media at a press conference to give our side of the story,” he told The Namibian.
