Financial crisis spurs mass exodus of senior staff at Red Pepper

Top editors and senior reporters at Namanve based Pepper publications raised their boots unexpectedly having endured soldiered on for a couple of months without pay.

A senior official told this Website that a number of workers have been resigning since the year began to look for greener pastures.

In what appears to be a financial meltdown, the Red Pepper has reduced pages and also shut down its sister tabloid Hello as a means of cutting costs.

Hello’s closure was resolved on Wednesday afternoon after the five directors sat with senior managers in a heated meeting.

Since its inception in 2013, the notorious tabloid had failed to expand its market share and also consolidate its advertising muscle making it difficult for the board to dip hands in their pockets to sustain its operations.

Its closure has stirred excitement among the public as it’s highly believed that the Newspaper has hurt many souls with its fabricated unresearched and unprofessional reporting and also wrecked many people’s marriages.

“Before the bosses decided to shut it down many workers had called it quits including editors, reporters, designers and those who work in production. So far Hello had remained with only 4 workers- reason it reduced pages to 16 with most of the content generated from internet,” an official at Namanve said.

“In an effort to reduce the production costs, management has resolved to lay off the remaining few workers. The company hopes to remain with at most 40 workers,” revealed the source adding that; “Copy sales have dropped yet the costs of producing and putting the newspaper on market have gone up. The company has less money to continue running normally.”

Exodus

This website understands that the financial problems of the Pepper Publications Limited started way back in June last year when employees went for over 5months without getting paid.

“None payment led to massive resignation of many employees. The departing of senior editors and photographers led to dissemination of weak and poorly edited content hence reduced sales,” explained the Red Pepper worker who preferred anonymity.

It’s worth noting that in the massive exodus of employees, Red Pepper and Kamunye lost over 10 top editors in a space of two months.