…SEEKS SUPPORT FOR ITS FACILITIES
Lagos, Nigeria: Airtel Nigeria refers to media reports today, Wednesday, October 5, 2011 regarding a press conference by the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) accusing our organization of casualisation.
Also, there have been reports in some sections of the media and several mobile text messages being circulated alleging that Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”) had sacked 3000 of its employees.
Airtel strongly denies these allegations, which are completely false and are aimed at running a vicious campaign based on misinformation. While we are making efforts to resolve this unfortunate development, we would like to highlight some facts, which put the entire matter in the correct perspective.
• Airtel DOES NOT employ casual workers in any part of our organization. We did outsource our Call Centre services to Tech Mahindra and Spanco, two of the biggest and highly reputable Business Processes Outsourcing (BPO) organizations in the world with global footprint. We also seamlessly outsourced our Information Technology (IT) to IBM, while our networks services are outsourced to Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks as part of an eco-system of global partners.
• Airtel DID NOT sack any employee. The employees, being referred to, work for Tech Mahindra and Spanco, who provide us Call Centre services.
• The employees in question were contracted through two employment agencies namely HR Indexx and CCSNL, whose contracts with Tech Mahindra and Spanco expired on September 30th, 2011.
• Spanco and Tech Mahindra have informed us that they are working on plans to recruit new employees, which will also include some of the employees whose contracts have expired.
• While we do not interfere in the businesses of our partners, we have advised them to manage the situation with utmost professionalism and with due regards to Nigerian Labour Laws and practices.
• We have also ensured that our partners, most importantly, have taken adequate measures to ensure our customers continue to get service support.
We also want to bring to the attention of Nigerians that at the time of issuing this statement, some elements purporting to be members of NLC, have shut down 15 of our showrooms across the country, and also attacked our Switch in Abuja thereby cutting off over 5 million Nigerians from our network in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and parts of northern Nigeria. We appeal to our customers in the affected areas to please bear with us as we work with the Nigeria Police to regain access to our Switch and restore services.
We call on the Federal Government, through the security agencies, to urgently halt the activities of these individuals, who are currently on a nationwide campaign to disrupt our operations with severe security implications and put the lives of our employees at risk.
Airtel is a law abiding organization and has contributed immensely to Foreign Direct Investment in Nigeria and created numerous job opportunities for Nigerians directly and indirectly. We remain resolved in our commitment to provide our customers innovative and affordable telecoms services backed by world-class customer care even as we engage the community with educationally relevant CSR initiatives.
About Bharti Airtel Limited
Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa. The company offers 3G voice & data services, fixed line, high speed broadband, IPTV, DTH, turnkey telecom solutions for enterprises and national & international long distance services to carriers in India. In rest of the geographies it offers mobile voice & high speed wireless internet. Bharti Airtel has been ranked among the six best performing technology companies in the world by BusinessWeek Bharti. Airtel had over 233 million customers across its operations at the end of August 2011. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com
