Striking fishermen to petition Esau

It is now more than two years that more than 1 000 Namibian fishermen at Walvis Bay and Lüderitz are on strike and continue to picket for better working conditions at sea without a definitive commitment from the government to step in to their aid.The chairperson of the United Fishermen of Namibia, Mathew Lungameni, and last week said repeated requests for an audience with the fisheries minister, Berhnardt Esau, have fallen on deaf ears.“We are being ignored; we have given the minister seven days within which he must respond to us,” Lungameni said.The “expiry date” for this response was 14 November.“The minister knows that companies are not complying with the labour laws of this country and yet he simply continues to give out [fishing] quotas. We want the government to force companies to comply with the laws immediately. We will not back down until the government and companies enforce the law,” Lungameni said.They want non-compliant fishing companies to be barred from being allocated fishing quotas. The fishermen intend to hand over a petition to Esau today. They reiterated that they are not on an illegal strike, as government insists, saying that they are withholding their labour while working conditions remain precarious and worsening for scab workers, or strike-breakers, who have in the meantime replaced them on fishing vessels. The 12 fishing companies with which the workers have declared a dispute with have refused to re-employ the workers.The Labour Commission has in December last year refused to accept disputes that were readmitted to its office on 24 October 2016, saying that the previous disputes the fishermen declared have expired.The Mining, Metal, Maritime and Construction Workers Union (MMMC) has denied this, saying that it has again lodged a dispute with the fishing companies two days ahead of the expiry date, which was on 24 October 2016. The MMMC insists that it has filed its case with the Labour Commission (case number LC-347-2016) already on 24 October last year. The workers further dismissed denials of injuries suffered by fishermen at sea with a list of 25 names of fishermen who have over the years lost appendages (mostly fingers), broken arms and legs, lost teeth, and so on and one disappearing at sea (in 2014). They said at least 19 of the fishermen have died since the strike started. Some of these deaths were as a result of suicides. Catherine Sasman

Striking fishermen to petition Esau

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Namibian Sun 2026-08-26

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Striking fishermen to petition Esau

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Namibian Sun 2026-08-26

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