The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Scan Café will be further reducing its number of employees by nine. The understanding has been made that the nine employees will work for the company until the implementation of the European Union (EU)’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is to come into effect on 25 May. All the nine employees deal with EU clients.
The company relieved 67 employees earlier this month, after which the employees submitted a petition to the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR) to rectify company’s decision. Scan Café remains firm with its decision of retrenchment since the company lost its clients in EU.
Scan Café’s Deputy Manager-Operations, Jagat Adhikari, said that the reconsideration of taking back the relieved staff will not happen, but the company will try to adjust with a few among the nine that are to be relieved on 25 May.
“Since the data law is yet to be implemented, until 25th May, and the work is still going on with the European clients, we kept nine of them,” he added that few might be adjusted to be placed into other departments.
Scan Café maintains that due to losing its clients in EU, it had to let go of 67 employees earlier and 9 more to go, as they work exclusively with EU clients. The 67 employees were already paid the compensation of two months’ gross salary including the 100 percent performance incentives this week.
MoLHR said that it is mandatory for the company to pay compensation if the prior notice is not given to relieve the staff. “The situation is due to international policy hampering the business condition, so the retrenchment part, which is following the specific retrenchment regulations as per the Labor Act, must be fulfilled by the company,” said an officer at MoLHR, Ngawang Norbu.
The company also reasoned that the retrenchment procedure, which is based on the performance of employees in last eight months, is reasonable and practical. Scan Café’s Director-Operations, Ramendara Narayan, during an earlier interview with this paper, said that since the task is to do with production, the assessment is somewhat an auto assessment, which he said is systematic and transparent.
He also said that the preference in recruitment will be given to those relieved if the company expands in the future.
