Vodafone Ghana Cuts a Further 950 Jobs

Vodafone Ghana is to make around 950 staff redundant before the end of the year, as its ongoing voluntary redundancy programme comes to a conclusion. The staff being made compulsorily redundant will be offered the same terms though - being three months salary for each year served with the company.

The lay-off to be implemented at the end of November will affect all departments and could also lead to the closure of non-core departments.

Mr Emmanuel Dakwa, Chairman of the local Communication Workers Union (CWU) of Vodafone, criticized the redundancies, saying that the company was wrong to announce the job cuts without consulting it.

"It was wrong for management to have held a press conference without recourse to internal arrangement with union on how to roll out that redundancy programme," he told the Ghana News Agency.

"It is very sad that whiles we are going round the country educating union members about voluntary redundancy, management decided to hold a press conference in our absence and announced a compulsory redundancy programme, of which we had no prior notice," he added.

Just over 900 staff have already accepted Vodafone's voluntary redundancy programme. The company still has around 3,000 staff.

Since Vodafone brought 70% of Ghana Telecom in August 2008, it has created more than 7,000 direct and indirect jobs in sales and distribution throughout the country.

On the web: Ghana News Agency

Posted to the site on 2nd August 2009