Ericsson fires 160 Nigerian Employees, Replaces Them with Indians

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Ericsson Nigeria has relieved 160 Nigerians of their duties in the company while replacing them with Indians, saying it was a move carried out in 180 countries it operated.
About 160 permanent and outsourced Nigerian workers in the Network Operating Centre of Ericsson Nigeria, have been sacked by the local subsidiary of the global telecommunications solutions provider.

According to an investigative report by Punch newspaper, the disengagement of the workers which takes effect on Sunday, December 4, 2016, affected 55 full-time employees of the company.

Sources revealed that the transfer had been going on since last year when some workers were laid off while some Indians were brought into the country to study the management of telecommunications infrastructure in the country, and had been recruited to replace the disengaged workers.

A copy of the disengagement letter to the permanent workers signed by the Managing Director of the company, Johan Jemdahi, and obtained by a correspondent, reads;

Speaking to a correspondent 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, 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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