MTN Nigeria, has sacked several long- serving members of their staff.
As confirmed on Friday MTN
sacked 280 of its employees in Nigeria, in a major job cut that affected about 15% of the
company’s entire Nigerian workforce.
According to Premium Times, those affected by the move include some 200 permanent
employees and about 80 contract staff across various cadres, ranging from new graduates to senior managers, multiple sources revealed.
Many of those sacked spent up to 15 years with the company having joined MTN as it opened
its business in Nigeria in 2001.
Sources said affected workers were given a dismal severance of 75% of their gross monthly
income multiplied by the number of years with the company.
“Given that the company is about 16 years old in Nigeria, the severance package brought pain
and discontent among the affected staff,” one source said.
“With the payoff structure, senior managers
with 15 years of service were left with about
N15 million. Most of the staff got less than N5
million.”
MTN Nigeria recorded nearly $1 billion in profit
in 2016. However, the telecoms firm was
heavily fined by the Nigerian government for
failing to disconnect 5.2 million unregistered
subscribers.
The spokesperson for the company, Funso Aina,
could not be reached for comments on Monday.
But a source familiar with the latest downsizing
said 200 of those affected had earlier agreed to
leave the company voluntarily.
The source said the sackings were as a result
of “the changing dynamics of the telecoms industry in recent times”.
The source said the company introduced the
voluntary severance scheme, VSS, to provide a
window for one week in April, for persons who have served in MTN for five years and above to
take up.
Those who decided to leave under the VSS were to be paid the equivalent of their three
weeks gross salary for every year they worked with MTN.
“What it means is that if one worked in MTN for five years, one would be paid three weeks of their gross salaries times five,” the source said.
Eventually, all 280 staff were disengaged under the VSS and paid their benefits, the source
said.
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