Gale Ngakane
19 March 2008
A former employee of Security Services, who has lodged a case of unlawful dismissal at the Department of Labour in Francistown did not have his case heard as his former employers failed to show up.
Last Tuesday, Security Services management did not turn up at the labour offices in Francistown where Botshelo Goretetse and the labour mediators waited in vain.
Repeated phone calls to the company did not yield positive results to find out their side of the story. Goretetse, 49, who was hired last February as a security supervisor lodged a case with the department after he was dismissed from work following a contractual disagreement with his employers. Relating his case, Botshelo, and a resident of Serowe, who had come job hunting to Francistown says he was hired by Security Services on February 5 to work at the Dukwi mine. He continues: "On February 9, we were taken by our manager, together with my squad, to Dukwi to start work. But on arrival there, we found there was no accommodation.
We returned to Francistown and it was agreed that we would go back to Dukwi in March after accommodation had been secured". He alleges that on February 11, in the company of other supervisors, he was summoned to the manager's office, whereupon the manager requested that he meet him alone.
"The manager told me that we would stay in Francistown until accommodation was secured in Dukwi. The manager told me that I would go on an induction course for two weeks and that I would not be paid in that time.
"I expressed my unhappiness with what he was saying, but he told me to compromise failing which they would terminate my contract. I also wanted to know if I would be given an allowance for transport from my place to the offices. The manager replied in the negative.
"The following day I appealed to the Managing Director by the name of Ali, but he too told me that he agreed with the decision taken by the manager. He said I must compromise. He also gave me an example of dog handlers saying they too had been in a situation similar to mine and they compromised.
"The MD said what then was so special about me," Goretetse, a divorced father of three says. Goretetse says when he first went to Labour Department to lodge his case, the mediators asked him to furnish them with a letter terminating his contract with Security Services.
"But I did not have the letter because I was not given one by my former employers. When I went back to collect it, the manager said they did not terminate the contract, but cancelled the offer. I do not know what he meant by that, but I am puzzled by the fact that they still have my property with them; blankets, shoes and food which we had taken to Dukwi when we first went there.
"I had left them behind because our return to Francistown was temporary," says Goretetse. The manager whom Goretetse says he only knows as Philip could not be reached for comment, neither was the Managing Director as their telephone rang unanswered. Goretetse says he would have desired a third party, to have observed the mediation but by the time we left after 10am, Security Service management had not honoured the 8.30am appointment.
Meanwhile, in another labour case, a diminutive Modiri Passman, also 49, arrived at the Labour Department offices to lodge a case. In his case, Passman from Mahalapye says he has worked on a temporary basis for Thabana Security Company for 12 days and then left them when he found a new permanent job. So when he wanted to be paid the 12 days he had been working for the company, the former employers refused to pay him.
But on being contacted, the Managing Director, Tshegofatso Habana says there was no way he was going to pay Passman, because he dumped them without serving notice.
"I have had these cases where someone just goes AWOL and then afterward they come to inform us that they found a job somewhere else and they expect us to pay them for days they have worked here.
I expect them to serve notice as much as they want to be paid when they are fired. I have got Passman's money. Let him come and work for his notice, then I will pay him," concludes Habana.
A labour official at the Labour Department in Gaborone who did not want to be named explained that in this instance, the party that fails to turn up is given 14 days to respond after which the matter is either referred to the police or the Industrial Court.
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