OVER 600 STAFF TO LEAVE UNDER GAMTEL/GAMCEL PRIVATISATION DEAL
The Minister of Digital Economy Lamin Jabbie yesterday informed the National Assembly that government is working with The World Bank to privatise national operators Gamtel and Gamcel, and that over 600 staff will be removed through voluntary redundancy and early retirement.
The minister further disclosed that as part of the privatisation and restructuring, only 350 staff will be maintained from both institutions out of 1007 employees.
“The World Bank has provided funds amounting US$4.6 million for the compensation of the affected staff. “The total staff for both Gamcel and Gamtel is about 1007 and based on the Social Plan already validated by the government and World Bank, we just want to retain 350 staff and all the rest would have to go. We are not driving them away. In fact, in their interest, we are not even applying the labour law which requires us to pay them only six months, in which case some of them would get only D40,000 to D50,000. But what we are doing now is a better deal for them because some will get between D400,000 to D1 million and even D1.8 million,” Jabbie told the Assembly.
He further explained that the expectation was that only few staff would opt for voluntary retirement but it turned out that 487 staff have agreed to go voluntarily.
According to the minister, government has already paid D210 million to these 487 staff who agreed to voluntarily retire.
“We have paid all of them and regardless they will serve for the next six months and are happy and ready to go,” he added.
Minister Jabbie also said there is a provision in the Social Plan that will see the creation of companies for other affected staff including cleaners and securities for them to run, with a possibility of providing similar services to Gamtel and Gamcel under a private management.
He said the same approach will be applied for staff in the customer care department too. “We are almost through this liberalisation and possibly within two months we will see a different story. We intend to transform these institutions into companies that would benefit all of us,” the minister said.
Local company to take over Gamcel
Minister Jabbie further informed lawmakers that government will bring on board a private partner that will be investing into Gamcel and upgrade its infrastructure under a public-private partnership model.
“The government has invited submissions of interest from private partners and eight companies including local and international entities have submitted bids.”
But the minister added that the government has concluded that it will go with local companies and they have already been asked to make detailed submissions for government to decide.
The minister however did not mention the local companies. He claimed that Gamcel’s problem is not about its personnel but its infrastructure. “You cannot be working on 2G and you expect to compete with those on 4G and 5G. It is not possible. So the key issue for Gamcel is the infrastructure upgrade and these two local companies have expressed interest that they can do it,” Minister Jabbie said.
Source: The Standard
