Nestle workers seek 28pc stake

company’s indigenisation plan.
Through their lawyers, Chingore and Associates, the workers wrote to the Nestle management on March 12 through the United Food and Allied Workers’ Union for fear of victimisation. 
The company’s corporate communications and public affairs manager, Mr Farai Munetsi, insisted that questions should be put in writing but had not responded at the time of going to press yesterday.
The workers took exception to a notion that they had accepted a 5 percent share offer by management when this was never communicated to them.
“At a meeting with trade union officials, workers professed ignorance over the proposed share option                scheme or consenting to the 5 percent offer,” the letter read.
“Workers welcomed the proposed establishment of the share option scheme and declared their willingness to up the proposed offer to 28 percent of the company’s shareholding.”
In the letter, the workers said, much as they would have liked to take up the entire 51 percent shareholding in the company, they appreciated the need to allow other indigenous players to take their share.
Under the Government’s Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act, all foreign-owned companies are required to sell 51 percent of their equity to locals. 
Most companies are complying with the law through a combination of employee share option schemes and the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Board.
Nestle Zimbabwe’s operations came under the spotlight last year when the company bowed to international pressure and stopped buying milk from Gushungo Holdings, a company owned by the First Family. 
In December 2009, Nestle temporarily suspended operations in Zimbabwe, after succumbing to pressure from activists against Zimbabwe’s land reform programme.
The matter was, however, resolved when the ban on Gushungo and eight other dairies was lifted.
Milk processing companies fall in the category of sectors that are reserved for locals under the Indigenisation Regulations gazetted in 2010.
Details on Nestle’s indigenisation plan were not immediately available and efforts to get a comment from Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere were unsuccessful.