Nu Diamonds’ cutting and polishing plant in Namibia has been shut down due to a one week long strike by its employees demanding for higher salaries as the cost of living continue to spiral in the southern African country.
"We, the employees of Nu Diamonds, hereby want to express our dismay to the management with regard to the way they are treating us…,” The Namibian newspaper quoted the workers as saying in a petition.
The employees said that the company management's behaviour was "immature and very unprofessional", adding that they were “tired of working for nothing”.
A spokesperson for the employees Sharon Katamelo said that they would continue with the industrial action until their complaints were addressed.
Several diamond cutters and polishers had been feeling the pinch of the global economic slowdown.
De Beers, which supplies diamonds to polishers and cutters in Namibia through the Namibian Diamond Trading Company (NDTC) allowed its sightholders to defer purchase of as much as half their diamond allocation until March 2013.
"If (customers) can't afford to buy, we have to adapt. This is why we have taken the extraordinary decision to defer up to 50 percent of (sightholders' allocation) up to March [2013]," De Beers chief executive Philippe Mellier said last week after the company’s profit before finance charges and taxation during the first six months of the year fell to $502 million down from $1.02 billion realised a year earlier.
Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished
