Mupane, owned by Hawks Mining, a locally owned company, has not been operating since March this year owing to cashflow problems. The company’s over 200 employees have been idle at home without pay since then. This week BWMU secretary general, Mbiganyi Gaekgotswe, told Mmegi that efforts to reopen the mine are yet to bear any fruits and the management of the mine keeps on changing the (reopening) timeline. He said that the mine management had also promised to have paid its employees last month, but such promise was never fulfilled. “During our interactions with the management this week, they told us that we should give them two weeks to work on efforts to rescue the mine. The information we get is that some of the investors who initially expressed desire to rescue the mine from cashflow problems have either backed off or disappeared,” Gaekgotswe said in an interview.
He added, “We are opposed to the idea of giving the mine more time to work on rescue efforts. We are considering alternatives at the moment and one of them will be engaging the management to urgently put into effect Section 25 of the employment act.” “As it stands Mupane is still under operation and employees are not at liberty to seek opportunities elsewhere. They have been sitting at home with the hope that operations at the mine will return to normalcy. The management has to release them.” Section 25 of the Employment Act stipulates that where contracts of employment have been terminated for the purpose of reducing the size of a workforce, the employer shall, if he again seeks employees in the occupations to which those contracts related, give priority of engagement, to such extent as is reasonably practicable, to those persons whose contracts of employment were so terminated. The section does not apply where the employer seeks such employees more than six months immediately after the contracts in question were terminated.
