Barulaganye Khumo says they expect to be briefed about trading conditions and their implications when the industry returns from the Christmas recess later this month.The 16 sightholders took an early break on December 12. They had been scaling down their diamonds uptake, with a good number of them not taking part in the last DTC Botswana sale in November. A poor market response, especially in the US where the effects of the global financial crisis is heavily felt, was cited as the reason. At DTC Botswana, the Secretary General of the DTC Workers Union Jacob Mpasupi says job cuts are likely in 2009 because management was talking to them about the difficult trading conditions over the last weeks of December.
Infact, the situation is so bad that in a bid to save jobs, the union has decided that DTC workers will buy their own uniforms suggested to management to cut down on meals. The company was spending P1.3 million a year on staff uniforms and over half a million pula a month to feed the workers, according to Mpasupi.But the austerity measures suggested by the union are not enough because just before the Christmas break, DTC Botswana's management demanded more cost cutting measures, or job losses would be inevitable, Mpasupi says.They are in the horns of a dilemma: "We do not want to touch employee benefits," he points out, "but there is nothing left we can do now to cut costs furhter."Fears of job losses at DTC Botswana come at a time when 1022 Debswana workers at Orapa and Letlhakane Mines were only saved by the intervention of the Botswana Mineworkers Union (BMU) after the company had purposed to close the two mines indefinitely.
