By Alphonso Jide
The House of Representatives Committee on Telecommunications yesterday queried management of leading telecommunications company, MTN-Nigeria over mass disengagement of personnel.
The committee during an investigative hearing into the massive job loss and drop in revenue in the industry also requested the telecommunications company to provide a comprehensive list of persons disengaged from its service in the last one year.
MTN’s acting Human Resource Executive, Ajibola Opeoluwa-Calebs, while responding to questions from the committee members explained that 194 staff voluntarily resigned from the company’s service, out of the 368 staffers that were disengaged from the service in the last one year.
Ajibola said some of the disengaged staff were laid off due to their inability to use the latest technology in the industry.
This according to him have created new vacancies and the company is about to recruit about 240 new staff, and vacancies had been published for 150 position already.
“In April, we had a special arrangement with some of our employees who had been with us for some time and wants to go and use their skills elsewhere. 194 people left voluntarily, while 65 people were disengaged with the discretion of the management, while other were disengaged before April,’’ he stated.
Chairman of the committee, Hon. Saheed Akinade-Fijabi during an investigative hearing wondered why 194 staff would voluntarily decide to leave the service at the same time, thereby demanded the list of affected staff for purpose of clarity.
‘‘Are you sure this voluntary arrangements was not compulsorily voluntary, I think we should verify this, we need the list of those staff that were disengaged by voluntary arrangement,’’ the Chairman stated.
Meanwhile, the director Human Resources of Airtel – Nigeria, Mr. Gbemiga Owolabi informed the committee that only 90 staff had left the service of Airtel in the last one year.
According to Owolabi, 60 persons out of this number resigned voluntarily, 6 were disengaged on ethical grounds while we’re exited.
