90 per cent of Visafone employees excluding drivers and office assistants has been recalled by MTN Nigeria following the acquisition of the company.
One of the recalled staff who craved anonymity confirmed the development and added that they 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,” he said.
About 500 and not 2,000 were involved because of the consecutive lay-off in 2013 and 2015 respectively and MTN did not want to take on liabilities originally 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 the staffs to come back and put them through the network.
Prior to the sack of the workers, Visafone had laid off half of its workforce in 2013 and early 2015 in anticipation of the acquisition.
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