Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer Suckoo admitted yesterday that she did not know when the Employment Rights Tribunal would hear the case involving the retrenchment of 200 former employees of the National Conservation Commission (NCC).
“I don’t know how soon it will be heard,” she said. “What we have tried to do in the ministry is to give a certain level of autonomy to the tribunal much in the same way you don’t meddle with matters which are before the court,” she added.
Last week the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) lamented that the tribunal was still in its preparation stages and was not ready to begin hearing the more than 70 matters which were before it.
Byer Suckoo noted that it was a new entity.
“We are just helping them from an administrative point of view to have everything that they need to be able to hear (cases) . . . . From my part I am not actively involved in that. The tribunal is a brand new entity so they would have had to start from scratch to have everything needed, even from having a telephone number.” (MB)
Please read the full story in today’s Daily Nation, or in the eNATION edition.
