A combination of the still-rampaging and ravaging recession as well as the constantly rising exchange rate has forced Africa’s richest man and President of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, to offload 36 expatriates and 12 Nigerians into the labour market!
The exercise which caught many people unawares is another proof that neither the rich nor the poor is insulated from the inclement business weather currently being witnessed in the country.
Hear how the Dangote Group communicated the sad news in a letter dated Thursday, October 20, 2016 and entitled ‘Recent Retirement Exercise’ to the victims:
“This year has been a very challenging year for us as a business. The unavailability of foreign exchange coupled with an unprecedented hike in the exchange rate has resulted in increased costs across the organisation.
“This called for a proper review and adjustment of our costs across board to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the deployment of our factors of production in a bid to eliminate redundancies that we know exist, which resulted in some tough decisions, which means losing staff, including some of our colleagues.
“On Friday, October 14, 2016, we began the process of staff cutbacks as it is imperative to review our human capital deployment for the required cutbacks that would ensure efficiency and eliminate redundancies in the allocation of human resources.
“This first phase of this exercise involved the cutback of 36 expatriate staff across the Dangote Cement Plc and Dangote Industries Limited, and 12 local staff members in Dangote Industries Limited.”
Undone, it added that: As an organisation with international operations, the group promised that it would continue to review and restructure its human capital deployment to ensure “optimal allocation of skill sets and size of the workforce each function requires.”