Elgin Brown and Hamer under scrutiny

Workers under the leadership of the recently registered Namibia National Labour Organisation will soon be taking action with investigations under-way in connection with some complaints raised by the workers at the Walvis Bay company, Elgin Brown and Hamer.
In a statement released this week in Windhoek, the former National Union of Namibian Workers (NUNW) secretary-general Evalistus Kaaronda, now the National President of NANLO, castigated how the country is independent yet the workers and the poor are still chained to poverty and growing concerns have emerged at the Walvis Bay firm.
“Workers at this company also known as EBH or Namdock have for the past years complained about the recruitment and employment of foreign nationals whose skills are readily available within the Namibian labour market”, he said.
Kaaronda added that on several occasions the workers had brought these complaints to the attention of the Employment Commission and for some reason there has been no satisfactory outcome.
Kaaronda stated that, “Workers have noted with disgust that EBH had paid more than N$200,000 for the training a certain foreign national between 13 to 18th May 2013 in matters related to occupational health and safety.”

In connection to this he said the workers feel that this money could have been put to better use and that any Namibian could have been employed in the position which this foreign national occupies, as the position was just that of a training officer.
Further more he cited that, the workers complained about the monies wasted on paying for flight tickets of families of EBH foreign national employees amounting to more than N$400,000 last year.
The Economist tried to establish and get an understanding of the contents stated in NANLO’s statement release from Elgin Brown and Hamer Namibia’s point of view only to be referred to the South African firm Kendal Hunt Communications, a South African based PR and media consulting agency that handles their media aspect only to emerge fruitless in those efforts.
Kendal Hunt Communications stated that“ We have referred the matter to our client Elgin Brown and Hamer Namibia, and, as this is a union issue, the company is not in a position to comment on the statement.” Kaaronda reiterated on how“Workers under the leadership of NANLO will soon be taking action and as we speak there is some investigation going on which started today into some of the complaints raised by the workers especially the ones that relate to one racist manager”,. During his statement Kaaronda, also touched base on other firms and institutions like Dormac, Shoprite Checkers, M&Z, Namibia Broadcasting Corporation and the Namibian Police as other problematic areas of concern for workers.