AIRTEL DENIES SACKING 3,000 STAFF

Following the news that broke out from blackberry messenger (BBM) on Friday (Sept 30) that 3,000 Airtel staff were laid off the company has refuted the claim saying its false.

In a media interaction yesterday Airtel's Human Resources Director ,Mr. Jibril Saba denied that the workers were never staffs of Airtel but Spanco and Tecmahindra,the two business processing outsourcing(BPO) companies for Airtel.

He noted that the staff were actually contract staff of Airtel BPOs and they were 1,535,446 from Lagos and the rest from Abuja, adding that their call centres are in Abuja ,Lagos, Delta and Kogi states respectively and because Airtel wants a world class call centre that would be effective was the reason for outsourcing its call centre to these companies that have tentacles across the world and are worth $39 billion. He stated that long call fuctions are being outsourced globally.

'BPOs are capable of generating 5,000 jobs and these staff are hired through third party agencies but the contracts of these staff expired not because of any undertone.'

From a legal perspective,Osondu Nwokoro, Airtel, Director of Regulatory affairs noted that the legal nexus binding on the BPOs and their staff terminated on Sept 30th like any signed contracts.

Meanwhile some of the laid off staff who spoke to Daily Sun on the condition of anonymity noted that Airtel cannot actually detach itself from its BPOs because they carry its identification(ID cards).

'We worked as customer service agents for Airtel but we were sacked due to salary disagreement. We were paid N75,000 a month but the new company owners from India has reduced it to N30,000 with the excuse that they are paying us too much.We need help,this is modern day slavery,'they said.

However the two BPOs in a joint press statement explained their attention have been drawn to several messages circulating in cyberspace alleging that thier client, Airtel had fired 3,000 Call Centre agents due to a disagreement over a purported plan to reduce salaries.

' This is untrue and we want to use this medium to put the fact right.Last year, following the signing of a landmark BPO Agreement with the Airtel Group, we jointly inherited over 1,200 Call Centre agents from Bezaleel, HR Indexx and CCSNL who hitherto provided agents for the company known then as Zain.

The contract existing between us and two of the agencies namely CCSNL and HR Indexx expired effective Friday September 30, 2011. 'The third agency, Bezaleel's, contract will expire in January 2012. So, there is no issue of mass sack but expiration of existing contracts. Prior to the expiration of the contracts, we had engaged representatives of the Agents and that of the organized Labour on how to manage their transition to our roll. Due to a lack of consensus on the way forward and an apparent threat to our facilities by some of the agents, we were compelled to suspend operations at the call centres last Friday, September 30, 2011.

'Going forward, our plan is to offer some of the affected agents a new contract with attendant salaries and benefits based on their qualifications and experience. We will also recruit new agents, because the vision is to expand the Call Centre business in Nigeria to 5000 capacity, ultimately.

On the issue of salaries, we state categorically that as world class organizations, we offer our employees remuneration and benefits comparable to standards across the world and in compliance with the working and labour laws of Nigeria.

'We are committed to growing the BPO industry in Nigeria and by so doing we will give meaning to the quest by the Federal Government of Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan to create jobs as part of his master plan to re-engineer the Nigerian economy'.

Source: The Nigerian Voice News