News: MTN Recalls Sacked Visafone Staff

MTN Nigeria said it has recalled over 90 per cent of sacked employees of Visafone following its acquisition of the leading Coded Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network.

Authoritative sources at MTN and Visafone told Daily Sun that all disengaged staff, excluding drivers and office assistants, have now been recalled.

One of the recalled staff, who spoke to Daily Sun on the condition of anonymity confirmed that almost all the sacked staff have been reinstated and are now awaiting their new salary remuneration packages and work guidelines.

"When we were asked to leave, we were given only three months salaries in lieu of notice, which was not too good because some of us have put in five to 10 years of service. Visafone Communications came into Nigeria at a time when the defunct Multi-Links and Starcoms were dominating the CDMA sector. It broke their monopoly and instantly became the fourth largest network in the country."

On the number of staff affected, our source said about 500 and not 2,000 as reported by a national daily were involved because of the consecutive lay-off in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

He further stated that MTN did not want to take on liabilities initially until it discovered that its technical crew could not understand the CDMA network, which it acquired because of its spectrum.

"When MTN realised that it does not understand how the CDMA works, it had to appeal to us to come back to put them through the network." Prior to Wednesday’s sack, Visafone had laid off half of its workforce in 2013 and early 2015 in anticipation of the acquisition.

Visafone was founded by Mr. Jim Ovia with the aim to take CDMA network to another level but, it could not compete with its GSM counterparts that enjoyed governmental support always.

Its take over by MTN was designed to enhance quality of voice and data services and to provide a robust internet ecosystem via Long Term Evolution (4G) as against the current 2/3G speed.

Meanwhile, MTN Executive, Amina Oyagbola, in an official capacity, explained that the acquisition seeks to leverage resources for service enhancement, which is also "reflective of our concerted efforts to deepen the growth and roll out of broadband services across the country in support of the National Broadband Plan for the benefit of Nigerians.

"We are committed to exploring avenues for meeting our customers' increasing data needs in line with our vision 'to lead the delivery of a bold new digital world to our customers'. As we work to maximise our data capabilities towards achieving broadband of international quality, our objective is to ensure that Nigerians experience a boost in the quality of broadband internet services translating to the much needed enhanced data speeds and value to enhance personal and business productivity."

Source: Daily Sun