Tmcel Workers Demand Clarification on Job Cuts

The workers of Mozambique Telecom (Tmcel) want to know the criteria that will be used by the management of the telecommunication company for the reduction of the work force fixed at 60%.
During the session of questions to the Government, which took place last week in the Mozambican Parliament, the Minister of Transport and Communications, Mateus Magala, announced that the viability of the company will be through the sale of a minimum of 80% of the shares, through the assumption, by the Government, of all its debts and loans and through the reduction of the work force by 60%.
According to Mateus Magala, who was speaking to the deputies, the measure is due to the unsustainability of the debts contracted with suppliers.
Speaking this Monday, May 15, in Maputo, at a press conference that preceded the meeting with all the workers of Tmcel, the secretary of the Committee, Fausto Maurício, said that during the process of reducing the workforce, he proposed, in a first phase, that the decision to terminate the contract should be voluntary by the worker, facilitating the negotiation with the management of the company.
But the news about the 60% reduction in the workforce caused enormous concern among the workers.
“It is for this reason that today we decided to have a reflection meeting, to sit down together and reflect on this issue, because we do not know exactly what criteria were behind the definition of this percentage exactly,” he said, quoted by the Mozambique Information Agency (AIM).
Mateus Magala had also announced in Parliament the need for urgent measures to save the company, because it “has lost the ability to honor its commitments, including non-payment of wages.
But the secretary of the company committee, Fausto Maurício, said that the situation at Tmcel is better than the one described by the Minister of Transport and Communications. “The situation is good, because we are feeling a pace of change,” he assured. “We are feeling the improvement in the operations of the company regarding the implementation of new systems and new networks, but also on the issue of payment of salaries.”
According to the Mozambican government, Tmcel has a debt of over $400 million.