Legislators express worries over job losses in Nigerian telecom industry

The Nigerian House of Representative has expressed worries over the continuous job losses in the country’s telecommunications sector said to be contributing about 10 percent to the national Gross Domestic Product.

According to Guardian report, the House has planned to invite the Minister of Labour and Productivity, Dr. Chris Ngige to explain the job losses in key Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in the country.

The House’s invitation to the Labour Minister is coming on the heel of an advice by the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, that it is only the Labour ministry that has the mandate to wade into the sack of tens of hundreds of MNO workers.

It will be recalled that MTN Nigeria, had last week, let go about 280 of out of its 1800 permanent staff as a result of what the South African telecommunications company called Voluntary Severance Scheme (VSS), which provides a window for persons who have served in MTN for five years and above to leave.
Reports indicated that the staff agreed to leave Nigeria’s biggest telecom company in terms of subscribers based voluntarily. According to the reports, the 280 staff were mostly permanent employees, who had spent five years and above with the organization since 2001 when MTN began commercial service in Nigeria.
Other reports attributed the relieved of the staff to changes in operation by MTN, where it plans to unveil a new strategy that would involve employing strictly tech savvy staff as a result of the company’s new status as a full-fledged ICT company.
The plan is to employ a new set of people, young and dynamic that will drive the new vision of the firm in earnest.