Gasabo district authorities have given troubled real estate firm DN international has a Friday ultimatum to remunerate all its workers or be shut down.
The company has about 30 to 40 employees contracted to work on its Green Park Villas project in Rusororo, Gasabo District, Kigali.
The project, which closed for over nine months since last year resumed operations recently.
The district mayor Gasabo , Willy Ndizeye, told this reporter that the agreement was reached when the firm’s employees stormed his office this Monday lamenting about nonpayment of their dues.
“I am following up the matter and in case it persists, we might even stop the construction on their site; the only option is to close them (down) until they pay all the workers,” he said.
“The challenge we have been having are the sub-contractors who did not pay their workers; so we are now not making payments to sub-contractors without the workers; any payment is going to be paid in their presence,” the Chief Executive Officer of DN international Nathan Lloyd said.
Lloyd insists that 90 percent of the workers have been cleared and the remaining ones are to be settled soon. But this to the workers is another gambit by the company.
“We have been patient since last year, we have families and children. They need to eat and go to school and we don’t have money,” complained one of the at the construction site in Rusororo.
The Executive Secretary of Rusororo sector, Jack Uwimana, said that when Lloyd was contacted yesterday, he told them that there were delays by KCB, the company’s banker who promised to clear the remaining lot of workers this Friday.
The Managing Director KCB Rwanda, Maurice K Toroitich said he was oblivious of delays by the bank to extend cash to the company but declined to reveal further information to the media.
“I am not allowed by regulations to discuss issues of my customers,” he said, adding that the bank directly deals with the customer issue on any issue.
The mayor noted that he is yet to establish whether all the complainants are genuine workers or have been influenced by one Mugabo, a sub-contractor, who was sued by DN International for executing substandard work.
Mugabo claims that he properly executed his duties as agreed but the company is yet to settle his payment to enable him to remunerate his workers.
“We are yet to find out the truth whether this sub-contractor is speaking the truth and is not using ghost workers to riot, but we have asked the company to pay workers and take the sub-contractor to court,” the mayor added.
Lloyd said that the company has lost almost Rwf15m in renumerating all the workers whose wages were defrauded by the sub-contractors, adding that: “The Rwf15m (paid) was out of sheer remorse of the workers and we want to maintain our reputation.”
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