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The Industrial Relations Court (IRC) has ordered KPMG, receiver/manager for the liquidated Import & Export Company (1984) Limited, to pay the company’s former employees their severance pay using the correct formula and repatriate them to their homes of origin or places of recruitment.
At least 1,200 former Import & Export employees, whose company was liquidated in May 2002, dragged KPMG to the IRC accusing the receiver/manager of wrongly paying them their terminal benefits and that they were not provided with transport back to their original homes or recruitment places.
IRC chairman Charles Mkandawire ordered in his ruling on Monday that the severance pay should be paid properly.
He said the receiver/manager should pay workers who worked for 10 years and above using a formula of four weeks’ or one months’ pay multiplied by the number of years of completed service while those who worked for less than nine years should be paid two weeks’ pay times the number of years in service.
The court also said it was unfair for the receiver/manager not to repatriate employees to their original homes or places of recruitment.
Lawyer for the former workers, Joseph Kamkwasi, said in an interview the receiver/manager Rey Davis, a senior partner of KPMG, was apparently giving priority to servicing an estimated K100 million outstanding debt to Stanbic Bank, formerly Commercial Bank of Malawi, and not the workers.
In view of this, Kamkwasi said, the former workers have registered a caution at the Ministry of Lands that no-one sells the company’s head office and warehouse building at plot number NY 599 in Makata until the former employees are paid their dues.
“The assessment is in this Friday and thereafter we hope to proceed to auction the building,” he said.
KPMG’s Steve Kamphasa, to whom Davis’ secretary referred the issue, said lawyer Modecai Msisha was in a better position to say whether or not there will be an appeal. Msisha could not be reached for comment.
Import & Export, which comprised a wholesale chain trading as Chipiku and retail chain Kandodo, went under receivership due to huge debts with its bankers and suppliers, among them Lever Brothers (now Unilever South East Africa), Tambala Foods, Southern Bottlers and Malawi Pharmacies.
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