Recession-Dangote sack 48 members

Monday, October 24
Laila Ijeoma'' at 10/24/2016 06:56:00 am
Recession? Dangote sacks 48
workers
The current recession rocking the Nigerian
economy has hit one of the biggest employers
of labour in the country outside of the
government as the Dangote Group, belonging to
Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, has fired 48
members of staff.
Punch gathered that those sacked were made
up of 36 expatriate and 12 Nigerian workers
from the group’s headquarters and one of the
subsidiaries, Dangote Cement Plc.
Though no official of the group was willing to
speak on the matter on Sunday, a Punch
correspondents gathered from highly placed
sources that the decision to sack the workers
was not unconnected with the current high cost
of running business in the country occasioned
by the unavailability of foreign exchange and
the unprecedented hike in the naira to dollar
exchange rate.
It was further gathered that the huge amounts
in foreign currencies being paid to the
expatriate workers had become a burden on
Dangote due to the steady depreciation in the
value of the naira and the difficulties of raising
enough dollars.
Consequently, the industrialist, according to
sources, has decided to replace the expatriates
with Nigerians, who have acquired the requisite
experience on the job, as paying them in naira
will be less problematic.
For the affected Nigerians, it was gathered that
most of them had disciplinary issues, which
made it easy for the group to do away with
their services.
When contacted on Sunday, the Group Head,
Corporate Communications, Dangote Group,
Tony Chiejina, said he could not speak on the
development.
However, in a letter signed by the President/
Chief Executive Officer, Dangote Group, Aliko
Dangote, dated Thursday, October 20, 2016,the
firm stated that it was constrained to take the
“tough” decision as economic factors had
affected the cost of production.
The letter, which was titled: ‘Recent Retirement
Exercise’, however, appreciated those affected
for their contributions to the growth of the
group.
The letter read in part,
“This year has been a very challenging
year for us as a business. The
unavailability of foreign exchange
coupled with an unprecedented hike in
the exchange rate has resulted in
increased costs across the organisation.
On Friday, October 14, 2016, we began
the process of staff cutbacks as it is
imperative to review our human capital
deployment for the required cutbacks
that would ensure efficiency and
eliminate redundancies in the allocation
of human resources.
This first phase of this exercise involved
the cutback of 36 expatriate staff across
the Dangote Cement Plc and Dangote
Industries Limited, and 12 local staff
members in Dangote Industries Limited.
This called for a proper review and
adjustment of our costs across board to
ensure efficiency and effectiveness in
the deployment of our factors of
production in a bid to eliminate
redundancies that we know exist, which
resulted in some tough decisions, which
means losing staff, including some of
our colleagues.
As an organisation with international operations,
the group promised that it would continue to
review and restructure its human capital
deployment to ensure “optimal allocation of skill
sets and size of the workforce each function
requires.”
The group urged the workers to shun lateness,
improper dressing and other unsavoury
behaviours in the workplace.
Bloomberg had in its latest ‘Billionaire Index’
reported that Dangote had lost $5.4bn of his
fortune this year due to the fall in the value of
the naira and the decision of the Central Bank
of Nigeria to ration dollars to stem huge capital
outflows in the wake of Nigeria’s worst
economic crisis.
Dangote had recently urged the Federal
Government to sell off the Nigerian Liquefied
Natural Gas Company and other dormant but
huge capital-generating enterprises and reinvest
the proceeds in the economy to bring the
country out of the current economic recession
before the end of the fourth quarter.by chibabynaija1