Recession hits Dangote as he sacks 38 expatriates and 12 local staff

Looks like Dangote Group has been hit by recession. Reports have it that no fewer than 48 workers have been sacked by Dangote Group due to the economic recession in the country. Those affected were 36 expatriates and 12 local staff serving in Dangote Cement Plc and Dangote Industries Limited.

In a letter signed by the President/CEO, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, dated October 20, 2016, Dangote stated that the group was constrained to take the ‘tough’ decision because of the present high cost of production. .

The letter read in part: “This year has been a very challenging one for us as a business. The unavailability of foreign exchange, coupled with an unprecedented hike in 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 redundancy 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 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 in Dangote Industries Limited.”