2,000 workers to go as Dangote Transport winds up

Dele Aderibigbe, Lagos - 11.02.2008

THERE are indications that the Dangote Group of Companies has commenced the process of winding up the operations of its transport division, putting on the line, about 2000 jobs.

Dangote Transport owns more than 500 trucks providing jobs for over 2,000 Nigerians.
This might also mark the end of a leading transport company that the business mogul – Alhaji Aliko Dangote––founded several years ago.

The winding up is to give way to a new arrangement whereby truck drivers will own and maintain the trucks under a lease arrangement. “We want to empower our truck drivers to own the trucks by themselves,” Managing Director of Dangote Transport, Alhaji Jibril Mohammed Hassan, told newsmen at the week.

It is, however, feared that the gesture would cost about 80 per cent of the company’s workers their jobs, a development said to be creating tension between workers and management, particularly those who might end up being merely paid off.

“They want to pay us only two months salary as our severance benefit,” a worker who has served the company for about four years alleged on Friday.

Those who had put in five or more years were similarly not too comfortable, as many feared that they would come out with only peanuts, as a result of the non-standardised conditions of service in the group.

“They are calculating our entitlements on basic salary as against our total emolument. Can you imagine that as a management staff, I will be getting less than N700,000 after all these years of working for the company?” another alleged.

“There are even many people here who will weep when they are paid because some of them will get less than N200,000,” he said.

“We don’t have a condition of service and that is why we are having this problem here,” said another worker.

Speaking further on the issue, the spokesperson of Dangote, Mr. Joe Okomah, said the logic behind the decision was to ensure a more prudent and disciplined use by the drivers, many of whom were currently using the trucks not very carefully.

He explained that the group was recording several avoidable losses, and management believed that the most viable option was to lease out the vehicles to the same very operators, and for them to serve the company on an economically agreed basis, while the company would provide the drivers with every needed support and assistance to enable them to stabilise at the shortest time possible.

“It is in the best overall interest of all concerned,” the spokesman said.