Trigon, mineworkers union smoke peace pipe

Trigon Metals-owned Kombat Mine near Otavi and the Mineworkers Union of Namibia on Friday agreed to collaborate to resolve workers’ grievances.

The mine’s vice president for operations, Stephanus Muller, said this in a memo to workers in which he described the meeting as successful.

“Reginald Kock, the regional organiser of the Mineworkers Union of Namibia (MUN), and I had a very successful engagement at the mine this afternoon … and strive to create a working environment which is safe and where fair labour practices are followed at all times,” he said.

This follows the union claiming that the mine’s management was sabotaging its recruitment efforts at Kombat by intimidating workers not to join the union.

“Whenever we recruited workers at the mine as union members and submitted their names to the human resources office, those workers would have their contracts terminated, resulting in the union having unemployed members,” Kock claimed in October.

The union also wrote to the minister of mines and energy, Tom Alweendo, on 29 October, asking him to send inspectors to the mine “in light of growing concerns regarding the health and safety of employees working in the mining sector at this site”.

“It has come to our attention that there may be certain safety risks and concerns at trigon’s Kombat operations, and we believe a thorough inspection by your expert team would help assess the situation effectively,” the union’s general secretary, Filleppus Ampweya, wrote.

There has been simmering discontent among workers at Kombat Mine, who have accused the mine’s management under Muller and Rennie Morkel, the chief operations officer, of racism, nepotism and bad labour practices.

In an interview with The Namibian on 21 October, Trigon’s chief executive, Jed Richardson, blamed some of the problems at the mine on remnants of apartheid and said no worker should be barred from joining a union.

“It is some of the bad habits from that history I am trying to correct,” he said at the time, adding he would love to make Namibia his second home.

“I have a largely black workforce and predominantly white managers, and that is always a challenge, but it’s something we can work with now and fix in the future,” he said.

Richardson said he had been looking into the workers’ grievances for the past few months, and spoke to the employees in June.

In the memo, Muller said Trigon and the MUN together are striving to make Kombat a better workplace for all with a stable and long life of mining ahead.

“Trigon management hereby assures all employees that no-one will be victimised for joining the union.

In fact, the company encourages our employees to join the union so we can better our communication channels between management and employees,” he said.

Kock could not be reached for comment.

– email: matthew@namibian.com.na