Loss making cement manufacturer East African Portland Cement is set to lay off all its employees in a restructuring plan expected to save the company from further losses.
In a memo seen Capital Business on Thursday, the firm’s CEO Stephen Nthei says all positions in the company have been declared redundant and will affect both unionisable and non-unionisable workers in the company.
Nthei says the Nairobi Securities listed company has been making losses of up to Sh8 million daily which has impacted negatively on sales and subsequent profitability, hence the move.
Subsequently, all jobs will be reconfigured in terms of job consolidation and enrichment, in line with the restructuring.
The cash strapped company reported a 30 percent increase in loss to Sh1.26 billion for the half year ended December 2018 up from the Sh949.2 million loss it posted six months before.
The company attributed the heavy loss to increased output prices, a sluggish market and production challenges, arising from the company’s tight working capital position.
In November 2018, the firm’s then Managing Director and Chairman Simon Ole Nkeri said it required Sh15 billion to affect a turnaround in its fortunes.
This is after the Auditor-General Edward Ouko described the cement manufacturer, once a giant in the industry, as insolvent because it could not pay its debts.
Nkeri told the Senate Committee on Trade and Tourism that the Sh15 billion of the capital injection would go towards settling employees’ dues, retire expensive Kenya Commercial Bank loans, repay the long outstanding JICA loan, refurbish its plant and settle suppliers’ dues.
How many new cement cookers have joined the scene in last ten years and how did eapc and co expect to survive doing biz the same old way?
Some of these companies are not collapsing due to the tough economy only. For years they were not paying taxes in full. They bribed KRA agents to avoid paying taxes in full. Today because it’s harder to escape paying taxes, they’re folding.
tunajua ni shamba jubilee wanataka kuiba wakitumia Guru
Good of you mnajua. Endeleeni kukaa woke.
That and a lot other ways. The senior management in companies like these are corrupt and act with alot of impunity, enriching themselves by stealing company money and paying themselves unreasonable perks while employing their whole villages as contract and casual employees!
Ask yourself why alot of organizations with major market shares in Kenya now or in the past have collapsed or are on their death beds. Simple, these senior guys collude with smaller companies that want a piece of the market share to bring these companies down. Unfortunately, it’s the normal folks that are employed and dont know anything about that shit that bear the brunt.
Kenyans are so corrupt, we’d win an award on guiness world record book. Shame
Rai cement
Rai=First Family. Pale Mombasa road tunatambuaga lorry za menengai kama za first family pia, Rai si Rai
And when Ruto steals people scream from the rooftops.
Should we keep quiet?
fighting corruption in kenya is biased and politicized. Uhuru isn’t loyal to the electorates but to his family. His crew grabbed webuye though legite but the silence was huge.
My uncle is an engineer there he told me that first family has been eyeing the company for a while, i guess this is it for them
Losing source of income when not prepared is one of the most challenging bit,hope their doors will open again
Tano Terror thieves have really been successful at this strategy. First run down the company to its knees, call in state agencies to “enforce compliance”, senior politicians buy the entity at a low price thru proxies or invest in competitors and take over the bigger market share.
Look at corporations that have gone under or are in the red, ull notice a trend.
Why do I get the feeling that KCB is being used as a conduit to pillage state corporations. Case in point Uchumi, KQ, EAPC… Aside from the government who are the other major shareholders