Employees of Etosha Fishing Company at Walvis Bay have reiterated their request for an increased fishing quota allocation.

The workers say 480 of them received retrenchment letters in March because the company does not have quotas to employ them.

Etosha Fishing employees have expressed unhappiness about their working conditions.

They say that they received retrenchment notices in March, and their labour union has allegedly tried to discuss the terms of retrenchment, but not a single meeting has taken place.

The workers have indicated that they work under terrible conditions, and management allegedly blames the situation on the lack of fishing quotas.

"The workers have been employed on a no-work, no-pay system. Sometimes the workers are asked to come to work for one week a month, and they are required to travel long distances. In many cases, the workers spend all their money on transportation. Some workers are now sleeping in the street because they cannot afford to pay for accommodation," said Johannes Nginamanu, a shop steward at Etosha Fishing.

The workers claim that Etosha Fishing was given 500 metric tonnes of Horse Mackerel quotas last year, but they did not get any benefits.

They have called on the Minister of Fisheries to brief their labour union when quotas are allocated to Etosha Fishing.

Tunacor workers also joined the demonstration to request that the Ministers of Fisheries and Labour solve the alleged poor working conditions at Tunacor.

"Tunacor Fisheries Limited received a reasonable quota of hake and horse mackerel fish, but the workers are not benefiting from any profit-sharing arrangement. We do not want any labour-hire to take over work at Tunacor. Seafresh also pays its workers a starvation salary. This company pays the workers 14 dollars per hour, which is very low," said Hileni Ndeshayama, a shopsteward at Tunacor.

The workers' two petitions have been received by Steven Ambabi, the Deputy Director of Technical Services at the Fisheries and Marine Resources Ministry.