Following the news that broke out from blackberry messenger (BBM) on Friday (Sept 30) that 3,000 Airtel staff were laid off the company has refuted the claim saying its false.
In a media interaction yesterday Airtel’s Human Resources Director ,Mr. Jibril Saba denied that the workers were never staffs of Airtel but Spanco and Tecmahindra,the two business processing outsourcing(BPO) companies for Airtel.

He noted that the staff were actually contract staff of Airtel BPOs and they were 1,535,446 from Lagos and the rest from Abuja, adding that their call centres are in Abuja ,Lagos, Delta and Kogi states respectively and because Airtel wants a world class call centre that would be effective was the reason for outsourcing its call centre to these companies that have tentacles across the world and are worth $39 billion. He stated that long call fuctions are being outsourced globally.
“BPOs are capable of generating 5,000 jobs and these staff are hired through third party agencies but the contracts of these staff expired not because of any undertone.”

From a legal perspective,Osondu Nwokoro, Airtel, Director of Regulatory affairs noted that the legal nexus binding on the BPOs and their staff terminated on Sept 30th like any signed contracts.
Meanwhile some of the laid off staff who spoke to Daily Sun on the condition of anonymity noted that Airtel cannot actually detach itself from its BPOs because they carry its identification(ID cards).

“We worked as customer service agents for Airtel but we were sacked due to salary disagreement. We were paid N75,000 a month but the new company owners from India has reduced it to N30,000 with the excuse that they are paying us too much.We need help,this is modern day slavery,”they said.

However the two BPOs in a joint press statement explained their attention have been drawn to several messages circulating in cyberspace alleging that thier client, Airtel had fired 3,000 Call Centre agents due to a disagreement over a purported plan to reduce salaries.


http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2011/oct/04/national-04-10-2011-0011.html

It has gotten to the point where nigeria needs to be xenophobic towards indians. How can foreigners come to our country to enslave us. The business should be seized from them and their core investors deported. It is the government i blame. You hardly hear news of anything being completed in this country. All we hear are grand plans to start a mega project. Rubbish