Alleging that 53 employees were terminated from the company without renewing their contract at Haa Alif atoll Dhidhdhoo's Fenaka Corporation offices, the employees have started a protest.
The participants of the protests ongoing from this morning onwards are locals that were hired by the company to install the new engine at Dhidhdhoo.
The protesters revealed that they had learned of their termination after going in to work this morning.
“Before, we were taking record of our attendance using physical signature. This procedure was changed on January 15 to fingerprint recognition. Even then, we weren’t informed that we will be dismissed after the contract expires. The fingerprint scanner wasn’t recognizing the fingerprint today. After many futile tries we asked about it and only then were we told we were fired,” said one of the protesters.
He states that four out of these terminated fifty-three employees had their contract expire last year in November and that they were still coming into work despite that.
He says that the rest of the employees will have their contracts expired in four months, but all of these individuals were terminated.
“We also do not find an issue in dismissing after contract expires. But all we are saying is to inform us beforehand. We are talking about 50 families. They have financial responsibilities and families to look after,” said a protestor in response to being asked if they should be informed beforehand if their contract will not be renewed.
He said that the they had to start protesting to regain the rights of the employees and their families.
“Our demand is to give back our jobs. We have no problem with being dismissed three months after that. Even that will allow us time to find other work. This abrupt termination without any prior warning is the reason we had to step outside to protest like this.”
In a statement provided to Mihaaru News by the Managing Director at Fenaka Corporation, Muaz Mohamed Rasheed, he said that these individuals were hired to complete a specific project.
He clarified that there is no current pending works at Fenaka on the island and that a decision had been made to not renew the contracts following its expiration.
The protesters said that there were some employees whose contracts had not expired out of the employees fired from Dhidhdhoo Fenaka Corporation. He stated that these employees were terminated with the claim that there is no more work to be done.
“Termination after contract expiration is something we hear on the news or through people’s stories. Without any formal warning. We also met with Senior representatives of PPM (Progressive Party of Maldives)/PNC (People’s National Congress). They said they had implored to the MD to find an alternative solution rather than terminating after contract expires. But we were still fired without any prior warning.”
During the administration of former president, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, 2000 contract staff were hired by Fenaka Company for multiple special projects. In a previous interview for Mihaaru, Managing Director Muaz had stated that out of the 2000 contractual staff, 1800 were employed to carry out minor projects.
The company had said that despite being heavily in debt, the company had employed permanent staff after breaching the employment procedures and that they will not terminate any of these permanent employees.
However, Fenaka Corporation said that they will not renew the agreement with contract staffs with no more work to do, and revealed that many of these employees had had their contracts expired at the end of November last year.
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