KIGALI - Bank of Kigali (BK) has laid-off 55 employees in its ongoing restructuring.

According to the bank, the laid-off officials either were not fulfilling education requirements or were not performing.

"We did an evaluation like all organisations are doing and found that some employees were not qualified for the positions they were occupying; some with as low as primary school education. We noticed that some had overstayed in their positions and what we did was to retire them,” Flora Nsinga, the head of human resource and administration at BK told The New Times.

Reliable sources indicated that the retrenched workers were threatening to petition workers trade unions over what they are terming as ‘unfair dismissal’ but the bank insists that the exercise was ‘as transparent as possible.’

"Of course you don’t expect people to be happy when they are relieved of their jobs, but we did what we could and most of them know they either had no qualifications or they were not performing well,” Nsinga said.

"Actually we retained a majority of these and we offered them loans to improve their qualifications but in some cases you would find an old employee who only completed primary school and it would make no sense if the bank financed them to continue with their education.”

She added that the bank awarded them terminal benefits of 6 months as the new labour code requires instead of the usual 2 months given in termination benefits.

"We are the first organization to implement this and their money has already been paid, the Managing Director convinced the Board and they agreed to give them (laid off employees) 6 months, and to this they should be thankful,” Nsinga added.

One of the retrenched workers The New Times spoke to on condition of anonymity admitted that they were indeed ‘putting papers’ together to petition the bank ‘because they are not happy’ but could not say why or when.

"You go and ask the bank, they will tell you the reason they fired us, but we are not amused at all,” the seemingly disgruntled former employee told The New Times.

The most affected department is the operations section of the bank and branches. She said the bank is currently recruiting new qualified employees to feel the gaps. BK employs about 298 people.

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