UB targets 600 voluntary exits
Larona Makhaiza | Monday August 21, 2023 06:00
During an interview with the president of the UB Staff Union (UBSU), Gadzani Mhotsha he stated that for over a year now, the university has been on a mission to be a high performing organisation therefore chances of people exiting their jobs are high.
“There is an ongoing process by the university to try and turn it into high performance institution and this necessitated that a restructuring exercise of some sort should take place,” Mhotsha said. Giving an update on the restructuring process that the UB is undergoing, Mhotsha said the university has even made progress in the restructuring exercise.
“We have in place a new organisational structure which comes out from the process that has been ongoing from Faculties and Departments,” he said. He added that the new organisational structure that has been set up would see the university support staff jobs on the line.
“The new organisational structure clearly shows that the number of support staff is going to go down when it is implemented and some positions are obviously going to be redundant,” said Mhotsha. He, however, said the UB has not reached a point of retrenchment but would rather let go of staff softly. “The university is trying to come up with a voluntary exit exercise where those who are willing to leave the university before their retirement can do so and this is where we are currently and a policy has been made and also at a stage of discussing exit packages,” revealed Mhotsha. He indicated that he is, however, not at liberty to disclose neither the policy made nor comment on the exit package.
Now that the process is put in place to have support staff leave on voluntary exercise, a question was asked how many support staff is the university targeting? In response he said: “According to the university management, we understand and hope that only 600 people would volunteer to go and should that happen, there won’t be possibilities for retrenchment,” he said.
Mhotsha foresees that retrenchment will be there provided that the university fails to reach its target of 600 voluntary exits. “The only challenge is when they will not be able to reach their target and that’s when maybe retrenchment will be and retrenchment will be the last decision for the university,” Mhotsha stated.
Moreover, he emphasised that no support staff should be compelled to leave but those who want to, they can.
Reached for a comment on this matter, the UB director of affairs, Dr Faith Rapuleng-Tuelo affirmed that the university is going under restructuring exercise and some people may be out of jobs. 'The university is currently undertaking a restructuring exercise through which some employees may be retrenched,' Rapuleng- Tuelo confirmed.
Rapuleng-Tuelo however said that the actual number of employees who are likely to be retrenched has not been ascertained thus far as consultations with relevant stakeholders is on going. She however said the move is to restore UB's organizational structure to be effective. 'This project is aimed at re-positioning the university organizational structure such that it becomes an effective vehicle for delivering its strategic goals,' she said.