Brookside Limited, a dairy processing company in Uganda and East Africa has reported 75% drop in exports to Kenya. They attribute the drop (since March 2023) to the ban on Uganda’s dairy products to Kenya. The company offers long-life milk,cream, butter, yoghurt, ghee and milk powder.
While they claim to have been holding on in the past 3 months, the company says “we are unlikely to make tangible results from the initiatives in the short run.”
“We have also engaged the relevant authorities in Government to intervene without any success,” Winnie Mirembe Mugabi wrote in a letter to the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development on June 30, 2023.
The company intends to “scale down all our operations across the entire value chain to match our current level of business which is paltry 25% of our normal operational volumes.”
In writing to the Ministry, the company is seeking to formally terminate employees whose contracts exceeds ten on account of “structural reasons”
“..50% of our staff will regrettably be affected by the way of a retrenchment intended to take effect in the month of July.The terminal benefits of the affected employees shall be paid as per the Employment Act of 2006 and will be processed within seven (7) working days upon clearance and termination acknowledgement,” reads part of the letter.
The company says that they will continue to engage the relevant authorities in Government as well as look for alternatives for “our products and should the situation improve, we shall embark on staff recruitment to reverse this unfortunate decision.”
