Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), the telecommunications joint venture between Finnish electronics maker Nokia and Siemens, is reportedly about to cut its South African workforce by 28%, in order to bring it in line with NSN’s global strategy.
The company has embarked on a plan to reduce operational costs and will be focusing primarily on their mobile broadband.
As part of their global cost-cutting ventures, roughly 160 workers in South Africa will be asked to leave, while the company will be retrenching about 17 000 jobs from its current 74 000 global workforce.
South African trade union Solidarity speculated that NSN is cutting their workers in SA, as it moves some of the operations to other African nations, “because it can do many of the functions done here much cheaper from Kenya”.
“We believe this is the future direction of our industry and we will intensify our strategic focus on these areas. It is where we see the opportunity for profitable growth as a business,” said Rufus Andrew, MD of NSN SA
NSN Global announced earlier that it would like to reduce its operational cost and overheads by as much as €1bn before the end of next year.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
