TROUBLED MTN SACK 252 ENGINEERS.

Due to poor revenue, leading Global System of
Mobile communications provider in the country, MTN Nigeria, on
Monday disengaged 252 of its engineers who were responsible for
the operation and maintenance of its base stations nationwide.
Our correspondent gathered that most of the disengaged engineers
joined the company at inception in 2001 and were involved in the
day-to-day running of MTN’s 10,000 base stations all over the
country.

The company had earlier in March explained that it and other
operators were facing the challenge of not only stagnating
revenues, but also increasing operating expenses.
According to MTN, the network expenses of the operators are
increasing due to the overall high inflationary environment along
with their network expansion activities, illegal and multiple
taxation, high cost of providing power and rising inflation, among
others.
For instance, the company said in 2013, the N34bn spent on diesel
formed 12 per cent of its total operating expenditure cost, which
could have been used to construct 5,200 new base stations.
It said, “Over 200 per cent reduction in headline price points to
massive free-fall in tariffs within three years through aggressive
price war.
“The aggregate spend per subscriber has reduced in the same
proposition with the expected net effect from new additions not
being sufficient to drive profitable growth.”
As a consequence, the firms said it took a decision to focus
strictly on areas that would directly impact on its operations, while
outsourcing ancillary services to independent service providers.
Following this decision, MTN signed managed services contracts
with global telecommunications solutions providers, Ericsson and
Huawei, who have agreed to absorb 232 out of the 252 disengaged
engineers from today.
The fate of the remaining 20 is unclear as sources in MTN
explained that they might have decided to leave outright rather
than transfer their services to other companies, or that they fell
short of the requirements of Ericsson and Huawei.
The company had said in a statement in October last year, “Under
the terms of the contracts, Ericsson will take over the
management, optimisation and field maintenance of MTN’s
network infrastructure in Abuja, Lagos, as well as the southern and
eastern regions. On the other hand, Huawei will manage Kano and
Ibadan regions, thus allowing MTN to focus on providing a
superior customer experience across all its network offerings.
“MTN will retain ownership and full control of its network assets
and continue to have responsibility for strategic design and
planning, as well as equipment purchasing decisions.”
Our correspondent learnt on Monday that the agreement between
Ericsson and Huawei specified that the disengaged engineers
would be mandatorily engaged for one year and placed on the
same salaries as they were earning in MTN, or even more, after
which the firms could decide to continue with their services or not.