The Sunday News
Sunday News Reporter
A WORKER with Intertol Zimbabwe staged a protest against company management for transferring her from Kadoma and failing to deliver her goods on time by sleeping in a tollgate booth in Figtree (Matabeleland South) where she was relocated to, two weeks ago.
Intertol Zimbabwe is a subsidiary of Group Five, a South African company which constructed the Plumtree -Mutare highway and is running nine tollgates along the road. The worker is among dozens other workers who were transferred since beginning of the year, after the company launched investigations into fraudulent activities at tollgates.
“When they transferred me to Figtree they booked me in a local hotel and I was given two weeks of which to stay and then seek accommodation. During the two weeks, the company had promised to transport my goods but they failed,” she said.
The employee said after the expiry of two weeks, management agreed that she extends the stay while transportation of her belongings were being sorted.
“However, on the same day when I knocked off at 10pm, I was informed by the hotel that I had been checked out at the instruction of management. When I tried to engage my bosses they were arrogant and could not help. I was left with no alternative but to sleep in the tollgate booth. That was so stressing that up to today my back is still painful because I had to sleep on the floor in that small room while a colleague was occupying the other part working,” she said.
Contacted for comment, Group Five, from its South African base acknowledged in a statement that one of its employees slept in the booth.
“Upon our investigations into the allegations, we established that unfortunately one of our collectors did sleep in a booth for one night. Management was not aware of this before. This particular employee stayed in the hotel for more than a week longer than the allocated 14 days. She was therefore requested to vacate the hotel. Her shift on the day she left ended at 22:00. When the supervisor on duty saw she planned to sleep in a booth, she was instructed to rather sleep in the administration block. She unfortunately insisted to sleep in a booth,” the company said.
It added that there could have been a miscommunication with the removal company, which resulted in her goods arriving late.
“Unfortunately, her issues were not communicated to either the senior management or the tolling operations manager, as we would have been able to assist her. We will be conducting a detailed internal investigation into the matter and will address any wrongdoing and will take the necessary action if undue process was followed.”
Group Five added that transfers it was conducting in Zimbabwe were triggered by the need to launch investigations into abuse of money.
“Following detailed investigations earlier this year we established that unfortunately certain supervisors at toll plazas acted fraudulently, with money being stolen. We are currently following a disciplinary process. To prevent a repeat of this behaviour and ensure that we have the correct mix of skills at each plaza, we advised all employees on 27 April 2018 that we were going to implement some transfers.”
