Expelled industrial workers meet with Ntuane

LAWRENCE SERETSE
Correspondent | Tuesday January 17, 2012 00:00

 

After more than 50 nurses were reinstated in December, the industrial workers, among them cleaners and gardeners, have become more desperate for re-employment. They told Ntuane - who is the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament - that the Director of Public Service Management (DPSM), Festinah Bakwena, had said her understanding was that all workers under the Ministry of Health should be re-employed.

One of the expelled workers said they no longer gather at the offices Botswana Public Employees Union (BOPEU) offices because since the nurses were reinstated, no one took the industrial class cadre seriously. 

 'We are being forgotten,' he said. 'There is no answer to our problems at the ministry, but we have rent and loans to be pay, to say nothing of our children. We would be grateful if the government froze our loans at least.'We were migrated from contract workers to permanent and pensionable since most of us  have more than 10 years in service. Some of our colleagues have received packages of that migration while we have not.'

In response, Ntuane told them that the matter would be looked into and taken further. He promised to return to them in a few weeks. DPSM could not be reached for comment at the time of going to press.