Dangote Group hits by recession as it reportedly sacks 48 workers

The current recession rocking the Nigerian economy has hit the Dangote Group, belonging to Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote,as the company has fired 36 expatriates and 12 local staff serving in Dangote Cement Plc and Dangote Industries Limited last week.

It is gathered from sources privy to the information that the decision to sack the workers was not unconnected with the current high cost of running business in the country occasioned by the unavailability of foreign exchange and the unprecedented hike in the naira to dollar exchange rate.

A letter signed by chairman of the group, Aliko Dangote, states that the company is currently embarking on restructuring due to high cost of production in both factories. The letter states that this year has been the most difficult for the group.

Part of the letter reads;

"This year has been a very challenging one for us as a business. The unavailability of foreign exchange, coupled with an unprecendented 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.”