Businessman and owner of popular Drip Footwear, Lekau Sehoana.
Barely a week after a businessman and owner of popular Drip Footwear opened his latest shop in Tzaneen he now threatens to close down the shop following accusations that he had failed to hire local residents.
Lekau Sehoana who held grand opening on Saturday vented his frustrations on social media adding that he might as well shut down the shop before his image gets tarnished.
“I have been seeing the Tzaneen locals venting about us not employing locals based on a group picture we take when we open the shop. That’s a team of at least 25 people working on the day and out of this number at least four or five are local store sales assistants, ” he said.
Sehoana said,” Now, we don’t have a problem with closing our Tzaneen store. actually, the lesser the stores, the better operations. If I have to distribute through Woolworths in order to not be threatened, the better. Cause I know, Woolies won’t. Batho ba tšhaba makgowa (black people are afraid of white people). “
Sehoana went ahead to justify his decision. “In retail, it’s hard to hire people from other regions. We work crazy hours. You don’t want your staff to travel, It’s a policy of ours to hire locals.
“At least twenty people on opening day are from head office, its Zulu people, Sothos, Tswanas, sePedi speaking etc and suggesting that we didn’t hire locals based on our opening day is so unnecessary,” he said.
“Also, if you want to be a superhero, create a system that holds data of unemployed youth in your area, approach all the big businesses. Make it a standard to make Malls, Farms, Factories to take Staff from the data. Instead of being a Keyboard warrior, be an innovative Superhero, “said Sehoana.
Sehoana was reacting to a post by one of the residents who demanded transparency on how people were employed at Drip Footwear in Tzaneen.
Resident Bengi Baloyi said,” Before McDonald’s can open up , The youth was told to submit the CVs at the Greater Tzaneen Municipality but now we have Drip Shop and nothing has happened but there are people working in there which we don’t know.”
Another resident Marvin Makhowa Weeh who had since deleted his social media post had called for the boycott of the shop.
” I thought may be aim of Drip Footwear was to bring an opportunity of employment to the community which they had opened their store, unfortunately they are here to undermine our strength and rob us to support them. Saturday of November 12, they have opened their store at Tzaneen Mall and none Greater Tzaneen and Letaba municipalities residents were hired so under these two municipalities we don’t have a person with retail experience? Drip doesn’t deserve our support in Tzaneen,”he wrote.
Sehoana said it was not easy to have opened his shop number 23 in Tzaneen.
” I worked very hard for this brand to even open a shop in Tzaneen. To just see people tarnish its name… you can lose in 1 minute what you have built in five years. I’m watching everything like a hawk,” he said.