Ailing Gupta company resumes retrenchments
Shiva Gold lays off workers despite attempts to save it, Shiva Coal continues production
ANOTHER Gupta-owned company, Shiva Uranium, has resumed retrenching its workforce amid attempts to rescue the ailing mining firm.
Shiva Uranium’s business rescue practitioners Chris Monyela and Juanito Damons announced that Shiva Gold in Hartebeestein, North West, had been placed under care and maintenance and the process of retrenching employees had started.
They said an agreement to retrench employees had been signed.
At Shiva Coal in Brakfontein, Mpumalanga, there is ongoing production, with overheads being taken care of by the mining contractor.
National Union of Mineworkers Matlosana regional secretary Masibulele Naki told Independent Media yesterday the process of retrenching the remaining workforce had started, with Shiva Uranium employees undergoing medical examinations that would confirm they were employable in the industry and elsewhere.
According to Naki, Shiva Uranium’s medical station has capacity to conduct medical exit examinations of six mineworkers a day. He said workers should not only be paid retrenchment packages but the salaries Shiva Uranium stopped paying them last year.
By November, the employees were owed about R8.2million at Shiva Gold while outstanding salaries stood at almost R2m at Shiva Coal.
Naki said before the initial round of retrenchments Shiva Uranium had a workforce of around 600.
The retrenchments come as the legal battle over Shiva Uranium heads back to court after two business rescue practitioners lost their North Gauteng High Court bid to be recognised.
Mahomed Tayob and Eugene Januarie have asked Acting Judge Mokhine Mosopa to grant them leave to appeal the judgment he handed down in December which dismissed the two business rescue practitioners’ application to interdict the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission (CIPC) from implementing the Companies Tribunal’s decision not to recognise them.
Tayob and Januarie say the high court erred in fact in holding that it was necessary for the second business rescue practitioner, Monyela, to give his approval of the appointment made by Shiva Uranium’s board.
“In doing so the court subordinated the correctly taken decision of the board to an incompetent individual not entitled to act for the company on his own,” reads Tayob and Januarie’s application for leave to appeal.
They argue that the correct interpretation of the law requires that on the question of the appointment of a business rescue practitioner in the wake of the resignation of a duly appointed business rescue practitioner, the board alone is competent to make the appointment and does not require the approval of any remaining business rescue practitioner.
“The court erred in approving the appointment of the third respondent (Damons) as a business rescue practitioner to the first respondent (Shiva Uranium) under circumstances where the first respondent, acting through its directors, had not made the appointment of the third respondent,” say Tayob and Januarie.
Tayob and Januarie had wanted the high court to review and set aside the tribunal’s November decision and declare them and Monyela the duly and lawfully appointed business rescue practitioners of Shiva Uranium.
But Judge Mosopa found Monyela’s appointment was not unlawful and that he was competent to remain Shiva Uranium’s business rescue practitioner.
“However, in due regard of the fact that the first respondent (Shiva Uranium) is a large company, the company or the creditors who appointed the practitioner who resigned must take all the necessary steps to ensure that a senior practitioner(s) is appointed to fill the vacant post left by Cloete Murray,” stated the judge.
Murray resigned in September and Shiva Uranium chief executive George van der Merwe, one of the company’s two directors, appointed Tayob and Januarie as joint rescue practitioners.
The CIPC rejected Damons’s appointment because of potential conflict of interest but Monyela successfully requested the tribunal to recognise him.