Zambia: Some 47 employees at Zambezi Portland in Ndola have been laid off while a further 63 are earmarked for retrenchment. The redundancies are due to reduction in business volume at the cement company, which is now faced with stiff competition from the newly commissioned Dangote Cement plant.
Zambezi Portland Cement operations director Danielle Ventriglia confirmed the retrenchment and said that the affected workers had been paid US$308/each in benefits. Ventriglia said that the retrenchments were necessitated by economic reasons and that the company would maintain a lean workforce. He added that the company was also working towards reclaiming the market share and had reduced its cement price significantly. Another 63 workers are expected to be retrenched in the next six weeks and the company would retain a workforce of 340 employees.