MTN Nigeria has sacked 280 members of its staff, which is about 15 percent of its workforce. Those affected are staff who had spent between five and 15 years in the company’s employment. MTN kicked-off operations in Nigeria in 2001.
It believed the telecoms company wishes to inject new blood from the more tech savvy generation into its operations.
MTN put out a notice in March for those who might wish to voluntarily disengage from the company, under its voluntary severance scheme (VSS) giving a one week window which expired on Thursday April 28. Following on this, about 200 long serving staffers voluntarily disengaged. Since this figure did not meet the company’s 15 percent target, they then laid-off an additional 80 last Friday.
There were vibrations of disenchantment as those who left were given three weeks pay for every one month served, as severance pay. Those affected believe that a big corporation as MTN ought to do more. The bulk of those affected were said to have received between N5 million and N15 million severance pay.
MTN Nigeria was fined N330 billion last year by the government for failing to deactivate about 5.2 million unregistered sim cards from its network.
