Bata Shoe Company retrenched 106 workers on Monday last week as economic activities continue on a downward spiral in Gweru City, one of Zimbabwe’s heavy industrial hubs.
Bata Country Manager Simon Mutisya confirmed the sacking of the employees to The Mirror in an interview, saying the shoe company is failing to cope with a huge workforce.
The retrenched workers expressed shock and surprise at the move and said that they were caught unawares with no plans for the future.
One of the affected workers, Michael Sibanda, told The Mirror that there were no retrenchment packages for them even though they had worked for the company for 10 years. He said:
As you might be aware some sections of the factory caught fire and might take time to come back on stream.
As such some of these sections will be restructured and approximately 10 percent of the workforce has been affected.
Approximately 106 workers out of 1 200 have been retrenched.
We are very disappointed by the development. We weren’t notified about the retrenchment and we don’t have plans as we are approaching a festive holiday.
The most worrying thing is that we don’t have packages after we worked for more than ten years.
Gweru’s industrial area used to house large companies like ZIMASCO, ZimAlloys and the National Railways of Zimbabwe (NRZ) but these have significantly scaled down their operations.
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