Mohalenyane Phakela
AT least ninety former AVANI Hotels in Lesotho employees who were fired in 2014 will be re-hired next month by the hotel chain which is partially owned by the government.
This was revealed by the Minister of Trade and Investment, Tefo Mapesela in a recent interview with the Sunday Express.
Mr Mapesela said that the government, which owns 53 percent of the hotel chain through the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) and Ministry of Finance, decided to re-hire the former workers while those who had replaced them will be retrenched after being given a month’s notice and also given compensation of M20 000 each.
“We sat down with the (Minister of Finance Moeketsi) Majoro and decided that those workers should be reinstated,” Mr Mapesela said.
“They were more than 200 who were fired in 2014 but some have passed on while others got employed elsewhere. So only 90 will resume work in a month’s time. We agreed with the hotel management that those who replaced should be retrenched after being given a month’s notice.
“We also asked the cabinet for money to compensate all of those who were fired and we only managed to pay them M20 000 each.”
AVANI Hotels operates the AVANI Lesotho and AVANI Maseru hotels.
These were formerly the Lesotho Sun and Maseru Sun hotels under the-then management of Sun International which owned a 47 percent stake. Sun International sold all its shares to Minor Hotels which changed the names to AVANI Hotels.
Sixty percent of the 402 staff members who were employed by the Sun International were fired in December 2014 after they struck to press for a salary increment.
The workers had asked for a nine percent increase but the management only offered five percent. The intervention of the National Union of Commerce, Catering and Allied Workers Union (NUCCAW) failed to resolve the impasse and after the workers downed tools on 22 December 2014, they were fired and prohibited from entering the hotels.
AVANI Lesotho’s Human Resource Manager, Lesekelo Makara, could not be reached for comment on the latest developments.