Staff Exodus Hits Jumia, As Calls For Criminal Investigation Against Firm Intensify

Latest exclusive coming from the troubled company is that mass exodus of its workers is now more imminent than ever. According to the information gathered by TheCapital, the staffers, who have fallen on bad times of a result of delayed salaries as well as harsh workers’ policy and harsh workplace atmosphere, are fed up. The plan of the staff to resign en masse is at feverish peak, as most of the them have been going to work broke and hungry because the management of the company has continually defaulted in meeting its human resources responsibility for a couple of months.

According to a source who spoke to TheCapital, the inability of Jumia to pay workers is a pointer to that fact that Jumia, against all pretence, has been struggling with its finances in recent weeks before the lid was blown off their corporate fraud which was brought to light by the US-based global research and publishing company, Citron Research.

The latest threats to Jumia’s operational existence have come from multiple fronts. There has been 50 per cent fall in the share price of Jumia at the NYSE and investors are now showing urgent concerns over the validity of the allegations raised against it by Citron Research. Patronage has also been hit with drastic plunge as faith of real active users, as against the cooked number, has dropped. As alluded to in its just released financial statement, MTN Group is seeing to the outright sale of its remaining 18.9% stake at Jumia, an investment valued at approximately $560 million as at May 6, 2019. The telecommunication giant had earlier reduced the stakes from 29.7% recently.

Lending her voice to the calls for probe of Jumia dealings, one of Forbes rated tech founders and heavyweight in Africa, Rebecca Enonchong, said Jumia was bound to fail from the onset, saying there is much more than meet the eye about the level of the fraud perpetrated by the firm when its financials are unwrapped. Enonchong tweeted, “Jumia is a bad business. It’s a horribly run company that has always had shady business practices. The ‘we are African’is just part of an elaborate Ponzi scheme.” Speaking as someone who was privy to the early days of the company, Enonchong continued “…First, I should mention Jumia Started one of their businesses out of my office so I know them intimately. Their numbers are all total BS. If you dig through their S1 and you know their operations on the ground, you will LOL.”

Enonchong said she had predicted their failure before the Citron report was released. She cited customer’s hatred due to inefficiency and messed up business model unfit for African market as reasons. “…They are my tenant. Serious issues. Very bad management. Huge staff turnover. Very bad customer service. And truly, no loyal customer base. The #JumiaIsNotAfrica hashtag went viral. That says a lot about what their customers think of them” Enonchong said. She figured out that Jumia must have launched their IPO because they were broke.