Athlete retrenched by Fidentia
2007-02-22
WHEELCHAIR athlete Ernst van Dyk from Paarl has been retrenched, following the crash of the financial asset management company Fidentia.
Van Dyk became a full-time employee of Fidentia in August 2006 - the same year he became the recipient of the coveted Laureus Sports Award.
Van Dyk was employed in Fidentia’s corporate office involved in both sales and client relationship management. His participation in international events was also partly sponsored by Fidentia.
Until last week - when the curators of his employers’ assets informed him of his retrenchment.
“I have no ill feelings towards Fidentia,” van Dyk said.
“The company and its staff were good to me. I was given an opportunity to advance in a professional career as well as pursuing my sporting dreams,” he said.
Another local victim of Fidentia’s crash is the Santé Hotel and Wellness Centre at Paarl, where 120 employees were axed this week. This left the hotel and wellness centre with a skeleton staff of only 100.
Senior management at the luxury complex, however, maintain that Santé will remain operational.
While the future is uncertain, the hotel is reportedly running on 85% occupancy and has already generated R2,4 million this month.
Sports academy lost
The ‘For Sale’ sign at the gates to the Hawequa Youth Centre on the slopes of Bain’s Kloof is very appropriate - if not entirely accurate.
Round the clock negotiations are still underway after the crash of Fidentia, the financial giant who was to have sponsored a Sport Academy on the premises.
Would-be purchasers of the Afrikaner Broederbond youth centre, local businessmen Johan Pauw and Schalk Burger, are hopeful that a deal will still be struck soon.
Meanwhile the Fidentia officials, sporting shirts with their employer’s logo, were still strutting through the company flags and signboards on the grounds last week.
The show of “business as usual” fell flat though, when donations from Wellington businesses and the public were needed to keep soccer and cricket players in training on the premises, supplied with food.
This week the grounds were deserted. The members of the Rangers soccer team who had been sponsored and coached at the Fidentia Academy of Sport and Technology since 15 January, had left.
Only weeks ago Fidentia’s general manager Andrew Tucker claimed the Academy to be at the forefront of sports development in South Africa.
Twelve cricket players joined the ranks of their fellow soccer players at the end of January, with former SA cricket coach Eric Simons as cricket manager.
They have also left the centre.
With their sponsor Fidentia under curatorship, the Rugby Performance Centre established by Alan Zondagh in Cape Town two years ago, has also now closed its doors.
The Centre and its 50 young sportsmen were to have moved to Bain’s Kloof next year. As at Bain's Kloof, Zondagh's boys arrived on 15 January, only days before the money-ship sank, leaving the rent, the staff and the food accounts unpaid.
All that remained was to try and find other opportunities for the boys elsewhere.
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