Arusha — As global recession continues to bite, some tour operators here have started laying-off workers one of them being Thomson Safaris.

The firm recently laid off 45 employees out of its 140 Arusha staff. The remaining ones will endure 10 percent cut from their usual monthly salary packages.

A written notice to affected workers stated that the move was "Due to dramatic events outside our control in the world financial markets (because) a recession has already hit tourism industry worldwide," said the letter.

The directive says that the company's confirmed tourists bookings had dropped by as much as 40 percent, a 'serious economic blow' to the company thus calling for measures to cut down overhead costs.

The first step was retrenching staff from various departments, according to the directive sent to workers by the General Manager, Elizabeth McKee. This was to be effective from the 1st of May, which is ironically also going to be the International 'Labour Day.'

Thomson Safari's Administrative Manager, Yusuph Kikorosha said the decision to send home 45 workers and reducing the salaries of remaining employees to 90 percent of their original pay was agreed and passed during an official management meeting.

However, some of the employees who are now going to be receiving 10 percent less from their salaries said they were not consulted. "We just got letters informing us of the decisions," lamented the workers who would rather not have their names mentioned in the paper.

"If the retrenched workers have complaints, tell them to follow the usual processes of claiming their rights through relevant organs as for the deducted salaries of remaining ones I cannot discuss that over the phone because it is an inside office matter," Kikorosha said and hung up.

We tried to contact the Tanzania Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers branch's secretary, John Shoni, a.k.a 'Kabambe,' for his comment only to be told that the TUICO official was among the retrenched employees.

The termination of employment took most of the workers by surprise; a number of them were still repaying their various loans schemes, some with outstanding debts and the terminal benefits paid to them were received by one hand only to be given out in the other.

Meanwhile, a local driver guide here is sceptic of ongoing retrenchments; "Global Financial Crisis is now taken as an excuse for companies to do what they like including sacking the people they may not like and getting away with it in the name of recession."

Mustafa Akonaay the executive for Tanzania Association of Tour Operators said firms whose customer bases were in either United States or United Kingdom, countries badly hit by recession, were bound to experience high declining number of visitors than other companies.

As for local companies not retrenching workers, Akonaay pointed out that, these operated on low scale and would not suffer overhead challenges being faced by their larger counterparts.

"Retrenching workers is not the only step being taken by companies as measure to stay afloat, but firms have also been reducing their rental spaces, electric and water consumptions among other cost cutting efforts," concluded the TATO executive.