Five instructors at the Elite Fitness Centre in Kololi next to Duplex night club have expressed dissatisfaction about the working conditions at the country’s most popular GYM resulting to their leaving a work that kept them engaged for four years.
The instructors George Tucker, Ebrima Cham, OJ, Yusuf Conteh and another staff visited The Point offices this week to express their grievance over the management of the gym whom they claimed handled them disrespectfully.
The head instructor, George Tucker, speaking to Pointsport, said the management of Elite Fitness Centre failed to pay their social security despite making a monthly deduction of D340.00 from their salaries.
The team claimed they don’t even know their social security numbers and do not have a card showing that they are members of the Social Security scheme.
He said they have been working for them for four years without receiving any employment letter.
“They also decided to reduce our salaries because they asked us to clean the machine which is not part of our work. We are instructors.”
According to them, there is already a cleaner for the machine and still they were asked to clean the machine, which is not their work.
Tucker revealed that despite increasing the payment for customers the management failed to increase their salaries, saying that initially customers were paying D1, 000, later increased to D1, 300 and now is D1, 550. With that still there is no transport allowance for them.
Ebrima Cham, a trainer at the Centre, also expressed his disappointment with the management of the Elite Fitness Centre.
He added that the Elite Fitness Centre is the biggest gym centre in
He said there was a day he collapsed in the presence of the management of the Centre but they did not take action about his welfare instead a customer took him to the hospital.
Cham thanked the customers at the gym for their support towards them.
The instructors who quit their work on June 1 did so verbally since there is no written agreement between them and their employers. “There is no paperwork so we told them verbally that we are leaving the work,” they told Pointsport.
The gym, located at a central point at the Tourism development area, is to have attracted over thousands of customers including holidaymakers.
Note: The reaction of the Management of the Elite Fitness Centre will be published to you in our subsequent publication.
