By Anita Dangazele
Five employees at the Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) outlet in Komani have been fired for allegedly selling the restaurant’s stock of mini loaves to boost the amount of R2 donations from customers towards the KFC Add Hope initiative.
The five employees claim that the sale of the mini loaves was approved by the outlet’s managers and that they had been under immense pressure to make the target for contributions to KFC’s charity campaign.
One of the employees, who spoke to Scrolla.Africa anonymously, said they were given warnings for failing to get customers to donate.
“We were under so much pressure that managers would come and check on us every hour to see if we’d made the target. [But] we can’t force customers to donate,” said the employee.
“We even said that they should start a soup kitchen so that customers can see where the money is going. Customers don’t want to donate because they don’t know what happens to the money.”
The employee said the five of them then took a decision that they would pay out of their own pockets to boost the R2 donations from customers. However, they were unable to sustain that for long.
“Then in December, one of our managers suggested that we sell the extra stock of mini loaves and use the profits to put towards the KFC Add Hope donations.”
She said this led to their restaurant being praised for collecting the most donations.
“This was working for us and our managers until it was discovered that we were selling the company’s stock to cover the shortfall in donations. Our managers distanced themselves from it as if they did not know what was happening,” the employee told Scrolla.Africa.
The five employees were called to a disciplinary hearing which led to their dismissal last week.
Their firing angered members of the civil society group Komani Progress Action (KPA) which, along with human rights activist Petros Majola of the Khula Development Project, organised a march to the KFC in Komani on Monday to demand the reinstatement of the five employees.
“While we understand that these employees have crossed the line by selling the mini loaves, we stand by them as this R2 donation seems to be a pain to many customers who buy from KFC,” KPA said.
The group said they appreciate the purpose of KFC’s R2 Add Hope programme, but said that instead of asking customers to donate it should use its profits for its corporate social investment initiatives.
“We support KFC by purchasing their products and we expect them to respect that and use such profits for CSI [corporate social investment],” the group said in a statement.
Akhona Qole of KPA said they would meet with KFC’s regional management team on Monday afternoon.
KFC’s operations manager in Komani, Luyanda Kapu, referred all questions to the KFC provincial office in Gqeberha, which declined to comment.
KFC has previously tweeted that “Add Hope currently supports more than 140 non-profit organisations ensuring 150,000 children don’t go to bed hungry daily”.
Pictured above: Protesters outside the KFC outlet in Komani.
Image source: Supplied
