Resignations might kill Mupane dispute

CHAKALISA DUBE
Staff Writer | Friday June 21, 2013 00:00

 

The 90 miners were planning to take their employer to the industrial court through the Botswana Mine Workers Union (BMWU) branch at Mupane for unprocedural dismissal after the district labour office failed to resolve their labour dispute.The resignation of their union leaders has dealt their case a serious blow.Some of the aggrieved miners told a BMWU national executive committee (NEC) meeting early this month to abandon plans to go the industrial court route, following the resignation of Mupane branch secretary Setlalekgosi Kooreme and chairman Thuso Raditsebe.

The duo is said to have resigned because they felt that the NEC was not supportive of their case.The retrenched miners are said to be of the view that the duo's resignation has limited their chances of winning their case. Kooreme and Raditsebe are said to have had vital information, and left the union before they could submit statements of the case to the industrial court.BMWU secretary general Bob Malele, who believed that the miners have a strong case, confirmed yesterday that some of the miners who were retrenched wanted them to abandon plans to go to court.'We are however waiting to hear from the newly elected branch committee members.Should they propose that we go on with the case, we will do so but if they think that we do not have the merits to go on with the case, we will abandon it. We will be meeting them soon,' he said.Meanwhile, the new Mupane branch committee was elected last week and was presented to management yesterday.

'The committee is made up of new faces because almost all of the members who made up the old committee, excluding Kooreme and Raditsebe, were retrenched,' he said.  The new Mupane branch president is Chilani Takongwa while Edward Mohutsiwa is the branch secretary.