MTN Sets To Sack 4500 Nigerian Workers

Information reaching Aproko247 indicates that telecoms giant in Nigeria, MTN, has already concluded plans to chase some Nigerians on its payroll out of the company and cause them some untold hardships.

Recall that not too long ago, while the xenophobic attack in South Africa was on, the company threatened that it would be forced to lay off about 6000 Nigerians on its payroll if plans by some Nigerian youths to attack its facilities in retaliation of the assaults of Nigerians in South Africa were carried out.

Even though Nigerian youths did not eventually attack MTN’s facilities, the company seems to have decided to punish Nigerians for reasons best known to them.

The latest information available to us shows that MTN has outsourced it call centres to a foreign company. The company took the job from a Nigerian organization called CNSSL and MacTay and signed a deal with ISON BPO Limited, an Indian/South African company.

It was gathered that with this, the fate of about 4,500 workers employed by CNSSL and MacTay are on the fence. This is because the new company, as an insider told our reporter, will operate from outside the country.

A concerned staff of MTN, who begged not to be named for fear of being victimized, narrated to us that, “The Company that has been contracted to take from the Nigerian company is ISON BPO. We now know who they are. They are an Indian/South African owned company. They ran a call center for Zain in Ibadan whereby members of staff were paid an average of N37,000.

“They will operate from South Africa and India. Some calls will be routed to call centres outside Nigeria. Some calls will be routed to new centres they are now hurrying to set up in other countries. They will not engage any of us. They said our salaries and allowances are too high. We will all lose our jobs.

“Meetings are being held on the termination of our appointments. MTN Nigeria management is ready to send us home as directed by the group.

“Xenophobia action against Nigeria: call centre agents in MTN South Africa are excluded, because of their black empowerment. MTN Benin Republic was excluded because the government of the country threatened to withdraw the license of MTN Benin if the company takes such an action against its people.

“If the government of Benin Republic can protect its citizens by stopping MTN, why can’t our government stops MTN from taking our jobs away for doing nothing wrong.

“In case you don’t know, some of our colleagues have been sacked in the past few weeks for making innocent comments on xenophobia and now with this decision of MTN Nigeria, more than 4,500 staff will be out of job by July 2015.

“This is exactly what MTN did to Visafone, which they recently acquired. They threw all the staff away.”

MTN Nigeria has been accused in the past for treating Nigerians as slaves in their country.

Meanwhile, efforts to get MTN Nigeria to react to this story were futile.