Mystery surrounds MTC fire

Kudakwashe Mutandi

The Mashonaland Tobacco Company (MTC)’s delay in releasing a report for the event in which a fire destroyed tobacco worth millions of dollars a fortnight ago has raised concerns among stakeholders with the regulatory authority, the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB), saying it is alarmed by the silence.

TIMB chief executive officer, Dr Andrew Matibiri, said MTC was expected to present a report to them so that they could understand what triggered the fire as well as the extent of the damage.

“We visited MTC premises on the day the fire started as well as the following day and management promised to come back to us with a report. We are still waiting. I do not know their internal processes and how long they will take,’’ said Dr Matibiri.

Dr Matibiri said such a report will assist in the assessment of the revenue lost by both MTC and the country.

Efforts to get a comment from MTC finance director Mr Walker Ntini proved fruitless as he had not responded to this publication’s questions by the time of going to print. However, sources within MTC revealed that the fire had been a ‘time bomb’ set by disgruntled employees who had for long threatened to burn down the warehouse.

The Sunday Mail Extra carried out some investigations and learnt that two months ago, unidentified employees wrote on the company’s toilet walls registering their dismay over “unfair labour practices” and threatened to burn down the warehouse.

This development compelled management to beef up security and repaint the toilet in question.

“This was a time bomb because workers have been disgruntled for the past five years,” revealed our inside source.

According to the sources from within, the workers were demanding their transport and housing allowances which had been accruing for the past five years.

In fact, the employees staged a demonstration in 2014 but the situation was immediately contained after claiming the scalp of one workers’ committee member, only identified as Mupostori.

“One of the workers’ committee members, Mupostori, was dismissed early this year for questioning the unfair treatment by management,” revealed the source who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of reprisal by management.

However, Mr Ntini, insisted that the sacked employees had nothing to do with the fire.

“We have no reason to fire workers because these are seasonal employees. The company had not given anyone a letter of termination of employment.

As we process the crop that we would have procured, we lay off some workers and we close between October and November when we are through with the processing and packaging of tobacco.

“Some workers finished their contracts and went home. This (inferno) was not related to the recent events. It had nothing to do with the Supreme Court ruling,” Mr Ntini said.

MTC is one of the biggest players in Zimbabwe’s tobacco industry. It contracts farmers to grow tobacco, the farmers in turn sell the crop to the company. In the 2013/14 agriculture season, MTC purchased $79,9 million worth of tobacco from contracted growers.