Staff Writer
Government on Tuesday evening struck a deal with NovaNam Fishing Company, where it agreed to allocate additional quota to the Luderitz based company, allowing 1,800 of its permanent workers who had been sent on forced leave to return to work.
Fisheries minister, Albert Kawana confirmed the development but was tightlipped on the details of the agreement.
“We have allocated them an additional quota and the workers should be able to return to work,” he told the Windhoek Observer.
NovaNam Managing Director, Edwin Kamatoto could not be reached by the newspaper for comment and calls made to his mobile phone went unanswered by the time of publishing.
The development at the fish processing company comes after on Monday it notified workers that they should stop reporting for work until it concludes negotiations with government over the slashing of its quota allocation.
This comes after the company had argued that their recently allocated quota could only allow it to operate for between 5-6 months, threatening the viability of the business.
The developments at the company according to sources had seen the company grounding its vessels fleet and cutting the number of employees per shift to 30, while only maintaining its export line operational.
NovaNam according to insiders had agreed to pay the affected workers 50 percent of their salaries, while those with leave days were to be paid in full.
NovaNam has around 2,700 employees.
The development at NovaNam comes as Walvis Bay-based Seaflower Pelagic Processing factory also retrenched workers citing government’s decision to cut the company’s quota by half.
The issue regarding the allocation of fishing rights and quotas has become a contentious issue with the Fisheries ministry arguing that it did its best to accommodate all parties in its recent allocation.
