MORE than 400 workers of Guadalcanal Plantation Palm Oil Limited 3 (GPPOL3) in North East Guadalcanal went on strike as of Monday.
They are demanding the removal of Field Plantation Manager Mr. Syfig Rusepini who they claimed his leadership role did not satisfy the welfare of workers for number of reasons.
They claimed Mr. Rusepini pay some labourers with low minimum of salaries, use abusive words sensitive to culture of Solomon Islands, deduct number of bags resulting to salary deduction and have no respect on the occasion of compassionate leave.
The workers are putting pressure on the GPPOL management to immediately terminate Mr Rusepini or they will continue to strike through this week.
Report reaching this paper said at 7 pm on Sunday the workers held a meeting at the community hall in GPPOL 3 to compromise the resolutions to justify their strike.
GPPOL Management’s officers when they heard of the strike went to meet with the workers but never came up with good resolutions that satisfied the workers.
They stand their ground and went on strike yesterday.
“We will continue to strike if GPPOL Management still keeps Rusepini in his position.
“If they terminate him this week, we will resume our work,” an employee told this paper..
The strike excludes GPPOL 1 & 2 workers as they are doing their work normally.
A statement from the GPPOL Management said they are aware of the strike and they will address it through their normal internal grievance processes.
“GPPOL Management has been made aware of the matter and will address it through our normal internal grievance processes,” a statement from the Management said.
GPPOL is a national project touted as a way to bring back peace, security and economic recovery following five years of ‘tensions’ from 1998 to 2003.
By LACHLAN EDDIE
Solomon Star, Honiara
