Maravi

KCM fires 26 miners over retirement dues

KCM fires 26 miners over retirement dues
Written by Correspondent
Saturday, March 07, 2009 10:21:57 AM

KONKOLA Copper Mines (KCM) has fired 26 miners in Chililabombwe for accessing National Pension Scheme Authority (NAPSA) retirement dues before they can attain their retirement age.

And five shops have been closed for selling mealie-meal at K80,000 instead of the standard price of K50,000 per 25-kilogramme bag of breakfast mealie-meal.

Chililabombwe district commissioner Timothy Musonda confirmed the firing of the 26 miners who were involved in the NAPSA retirement dues scam.

Musonda said in an interview in Chililabombwe yesterday that the 26 had been fired for absconding work and also for bringing the name of the company into ridicule.

He said police and other security wings had since intensified investigations to bring more culprits to book so that they could face the wrath of the law.

"I can confirm that KCM in Chililabombwe has fired 26 miners who were believed to be among the 300 miners on the Copperbelt who are alleged to have fraudulently accessed their pension dues from NAPSA. Some of them were recently arrested. The fired miners have since appealed against management decision to dismiss them. Their first and second appeals were thrown out and right now they were waiting for an outcome of their last appeal," he said.

"There is group of crooked characters that mislead the miners that they can access their dues before attaining their retirement age and some miners fell for that and in the process, the scam burst, hence the arrest and firing of some miners."

And Musonda has said his office decided to close down the five shops, which were selling mealie meal at K80,000 because the government was not happy to see people being exploited by unscrupulous traders in the district.

He said his office and other law enforcement agencies in the area would be vigilant to ensure that traders were not exploiting the consumers by selling the commodity more than the recommended price of K50,000 per 25kg bag.

He said the district was fighting both the smuggling of the commodity into neighbouring countries and the exploiting of people by unscrupulous traders who were overcharging on mealie-meal.

"The problem of artificial shortage of mealie meal in the border town was getting out of hand. Almost all the marketeers have virtually abandoned their usual businesses of selling commodities such as vegetables and have turned to trading in mealie meal. Even our effort to subject buyers to dip their fingers in ink is proving futile as they are using spirit to remove them. Stands in markets are now found empty as most family members prefer to go and line up for mealie meal especially in retail shops where we are regulating the prices of the commodity," said Musonda.

Labels: INFLATION, JOBLOSSES, KCM, MEALIE-MEAL, NAPSA, TIMOTHY MUSONDA

posted by MrK @ 10:22 AM