Fakhri Al-Arashi -
Thi-Yazan Saif, a former employee at telecommunications company MTN, claims he was recently dismissed without any administrative investigation or legal cause after submitting worker demands on behalf of employees in his section at the company. According to Saif, the list of demands was not reviewed, and company officials instead chose to fire him.

Employees at MTN lack union representation. As a result, they have increasingly suffered from harsh and arbitrary violations against their rights by company administration. Company policies do not leave room for workers to submit collective demands and also severely limit their ability to improve their working conditions.

Employees say that this exploitation of their demands and rights results from the absence of strong NGOs and the minimal role of employee unions in Yemen. According to MTN employees, the Ministry of Labor should protect the employees from such actions as was described above.

“They aim to threaten us through the dismissal of our colleague, even though the demands were professionally written,” an MTN employee said.

Source: National Yemen