The jobs of more than 600 fishermen who resigned at Walvis Bay, in the Erongo Region, will be offered to other people in the fishing industry.

This is according to Richard Metcalfe, the lawyer representing the four companies that have taken legal action against the employees. 

The workers were employed by Hadago Fishing, Kuiseb Enterprises, Cavema and Vernier Investments in Walvis Bay.

After the group allegedly resigned in August without giving the requisite months' notice, the companies withheld their severance pay and their leave days will be deducted from their last pay.

The companies' lawyer, Richard Metcalfe, in a letter to the workers' union, says the vacant jobs will be advertised to continue creating employment.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Derek Klazen, has announced that the government will negotiate with the companies to re-instate the workers and for the workers to withdraw their resignations.

Klazen informed the National Assembly that the ministries of Labour and Fisheries went out of their way to negotiate with the companies to re-employ them in 2021 in exchange for fishing quotas.

An illegal strike cost the workers their jobs in 2015, and they have since been camping out in protest near the Kuisebmund stadium.

According to the agreement the government and the companies entered into, the re-employed workers were to receive a basic salary of N$4,000 without active employment. "There seems to be a flawed understanding that perception amongst some of the affected fishermen that the fishing quota against which the employment of the affected employees has been secured is and remains the property of the affected workers, and further that these quotas are transferable to wherever the employees want them to go. The regretful emergence of new companies claiming to offer these workers better salaries than what they are currently earning further compounds the problem in which they require the fishermen to resign."

Klazen says the ministry is looking for a way to get the fishermen some active duty employment and will further consult unions to explain the fishing quota that was meant for restoring jobs that were lost in the industry.