MTN Nigeria Sacks 15% of Its Nigerian Workforce, Position Available For Contract

Gloom or gloomy day you might want to call it not “May Day” for some MTN staff or better still, “May Day May Day” when there is danger or disaster calling for attention for rescue.

As workers were celebrating “Workers Day” on Monday across the world, MTN were busy dishing out disengagement letters to some 200, making 15.6% of its entire 1,800 Nigerian workforce of the telecommunication company that has its headquarters in South Africa.

It will interest you to know Nigeria happens to be the country where MTN gets its largest revenue in all the countries they are operating in the world.

Record shows that most affected staff were said to have put in 5 years and above serving in the telecommunication giant.

However, MTN spokesman Funsho Aina said “MTN is a diverse community of committed change agents, brought together in pursuit of a common goal driving growth and transformation by sharing our technology.”

“Our people are our greatest asset, each individual’s knowledge, experience and ideas contributes to our continued growth and improvement. As such, ensuring a healthy and highly motivated workforce is a priority for us.”

Funsho said the disengagement was a voluntary agreement between the company and the employees in a scheme called Voluntary Severance Scheme, (VSS). It is designed to balance individual employee needs with business exigencies of the company.

But investigation indicates that hours after the disengagement of the said workers, the same positions were available for application in the company as contract.

In a country like Nigeria that has a strong labour union, somee affected staff are calling on the Labour union to look at the situation and investigate to see if there is really and anomaly with the whole issue.