Ericsson Nigeria, the local subsidiary
of the global telecommunications solutions provider, has disengaged
about 160 permanent and outsourced workers in its Network Operating
Centre, investigations have shown.
It was gathered that
disengagement, which takes effect on Sunday, December 4, 2016, affected
55 full-time employees of the company.
According to sources in
the company, some workers were laid off in July when the offshoring (the
practice of a company in one country arranging for people in another
country to do work for it) of jobs to India began.
Findings show
that foreign workers had been recruited to replace the disengaged
workers, and knowledge transfer by Nigerian engineers to the new workers
was ongoing in the company’s office in India.
Sources revealed
that the knowledge transfer had been going on since last year when some
Indians were brought into the country to study the management of
telecommunications infrastructure in the country.
A copy of the
disengagement letter to the permanent workers signed by the Managing
Director of the company, Johan Jemdahi, and obtained by our
correspondent, reads, “Please be informed that effective December 4,
2016, your position has been declared redundant. We thank you for all
your past services to Ericsson. Further information about the redundancy
benefits will be communicated to you before the actual termination
date.”
Findings showed that in the last two and half years,
Ericsson Nigeria had managed the MTN network majorly from its pool of
local workers, some of who were former MTN employees, as well as other
contracted workers.
One of the affected workers said that the
company was offering the jobs, which involved the monitoring of MTN
masts and networks in the country, to Indians at reduced costs.
The
workers expressed fears that this would be a continuous trend in the
telecommunications industry if it was not addressed by the government.
The
employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “The company said
it was cheaper for the work to be done in India than in Nigeria. The
monitoring of those masts can be done from anywhere. We monitor Abuja,
Enugu, Asaba, and Port Harcourt sites from the Lagos office. What they
are now proposing is that instead of monitoring from Lagos, they want to
monitor from India.
“They have taken the Airtel NOC office to
India. They brought about 30 Indians to Nigeria last year to come and
understudy the MTN network and after a month, they went back and started
monitoring from there. There are no plans to pay compensation to the
outsourced workers in the company.”
The Public Relations Manager,
Sub-Saharan Africa, Ericsson, Toju Egbebi, who confirmed the
development to our correspondent, said the move was part of the
company’s global cost and efficiency programme to achieve a net annual
cost savings of Swedish Krona 9bn, adding that the programme would
continue till 2017.
According to her, the redundancy is being carried out across 180 countries where the company operates.
She
explained that on July 19, the company announced actions to further
save costs as well as intensify reductions in cost of sales activities
and adapt its operations to a weaker mobile broadband market.
Egbebi
added, “This means employees will be affected. The decision to offshore
our service is in keeping with our global delivery strategy; certain
work may be centralised into global delivery centres. This is to enable
improved network availability and quality for consumers, and cost
efficient network operations for operators.”
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