Employees of Eagle Nightwatch Security Services have accused their employer of breaching the Government gazetted minimum wages by not paying employees what is stipulated by law.

In a petition read by the Affirmative Repositioning movement’s Teofilus Mbabi during a peaceful demonstration in Swakopmund on Thursday, the employees who are stationed at Swakop Uranium Mine, claimed that they were still being paid N.dollars 8.75 per hour, which is entry level wage, as opposed to N.dollars 10.

“Labour Act 11 of 2007 states that security officers who have, at that time, been employed with their current employer for a cumulative period of no less than 12 months, shall be paid N.dollars 10 hour. Since the company continued ignoring these provisions, it should be liable to remunerate the employees for each month they failed to comply with the minimum wage provision,” he said.

Some employees have also claimed that tax and social security fees are being deducted from them, even though some employees have not yet been registered with the Social Security Commission.

“Employees were deducted tax, but there is proof that the Namibia Revenue Agency has no records of receiving that money from the company, which means it has also failed to submit their returns for 2021 and 2022,” Mbabi alleged.

The employees have demanded a response within 15 working days, saying that failure to do so would result in employees launching a labour dispute with the labour office.

The security company’s administrative officer, Liezel Nangolo, received the petition on behalf of the company manager and promised to hand it over to him.

Minister of Labour, Industrial Relations and Employment Creation, Utoni Nujoma recently raised concerns regarding the continuous contravention of the same Labour Act and the Collective Agreement for Minimum Wages in the Security Industry.

The minister, during a recent meeting with Security Association of Namibia (SAN) representatives, revealed that after an inspection, 61 security employers were not compliant with the provisions of the law.

“The ministry’s records also show that most labour related complaints being attended to, have to do with issues of employers not paying severance pay, unfair dismissals, unpaid remuneration and unlawful deductions among others,” the minister said.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency