Employees of Telkom Kenya are not going down without a fight. After the company announced some 400 staff would be let go as part of a downsizing effort to boost profit margins, protests and a possible strike loom.
According to the Communication Workers Union, they will fight the telecom company’s plans to retrench the workers in the coming weeks, saying that it is unacceptable that this would happen at the current moment.
The company repeated on Thursday that the moves are part of a cost-cutting initiative to respond to “rising competition and a vicious price war in the telecommunications market since the middle of last year.”
However, the union says it was not consulted over the plan to let employees go, Business Daily reported a statement from the union as saying.
“There is no justification whatsoever to retrench or send home more employees in the name of stiff competition. Competition is everywhere and Telkom Kenya should be able to compete like the rest,” the daily quoted Benson Okwaro, the secretary general of the workers union as saying.
Okwaro said he has asked the government, which owns a 49 percent stake to intervene, the daily said.
Families of employees have already spoken out against the moves, saying it will affect their ability to survive. One employee said that she was worried that “if I am let go then we won’t be able to provide food for our family because my husband is unemployed at the moment.”
By Staff
