`Urafiki decision to lay off labourers still stands`

Tanzania-China Friendship Textile Company Ltd (Urafiki) has not heeded the recent government call to reemploy the workers it laid off, despite the fact that private companies were ordered to observe it paving the effecting of new salary scales in January next year.

Speaking to this paper on Thursday over the telephone, the company`s Human Resource Manager, Moses Swai, said that they had decided against taking back the 500 labourers because of the current financial instability in the company.

`We won`t manage to reemploy them, our financial condition at the moment is not favourable, business is not flowing as usual, we would like to take them back, but unfortunately we can`t,` he said.

Last week, the company management laid off labourers saying they were doing so to meet the newly proposed private sector minimum wages.

Swai said that the company would, instead, pay them their terminal benefits, as from November 15, this year.

Such payment would take place in accordance with the laws governing the employment.

He said that the announcement on time extension by the Minister for Labour, Employment and Youth Development, Capt (rtd) John Chilligati, came when they had already taken the said measures.

Extension of the new salary scale came so fast that it was not possible to adjust matters.

The Urafiki Secretary of Tanzania Union of Industrial and Commercial Workers (TUICO), Florian Makero, said that if the management would not adhere to the company decision to pay the laid off workers the terminal benefits, his organization would present the matter to higher legal bodies for more consultation.