The High Court has ordered the
government to pay Shs29.1 billion to former employees of the defunct
Coffee marketing Board as special
damages for being retrenched without
being paid their terminal benefits.
More than 1500 employees of the
government owned company had their services terminated between 1991 and 1998 under the Public Enterprises
Reform and Divestiture Act of 1993.
Their terminal benefits were meant to be paid from the proceeds of
divestiture but that did not happen.
The matter was brought to the
attention of the president who
directed that the former employees
be paid but government technocrats did not release the funds prompting
the former employees to take the
case to court.
Coffee Marketing Board was a limited
liability company fully owned by the government in the 1970’s. At the time
the export of coffee was the
monopoly of the company to protect
small coffee producers from
fluctuations in the price of the
commodity on the world market.
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