NO JOB CUTS, SAYS AXIATA
Telco does not believe in benefiting at the expense of employees, says CEO
AXIATA Group Bhd president and group chief executive officer Tan Sri Jamaludin Ibrahim says there will be no job cuts if the proposed merger with Norwegian mobile operator Telenor ASA materialises.
He said the planned merger, which is expected to be completed by the third quarter of next year, would not result in any retrenchments as Axiata believes it should not benefit from the merger at the expense of its employees.
“There will be no retrenchments (as a result of the proposed merger), that is a guarantee,” he
said recently, allaying concerns after the news on the proposed merger broke earlier this month.
“We will not do things to harm our employees, as our philosophy has always included protecting employees’ welfare.
“Celcom has always had a high number of employees but we had never conducted any retrenchments, apart from offering the voluntary separation scheme (VSS),” said Jamaludin, who has led the telecommunications conglomerate since 2008.
Celcom had conducted three VSS exercises since 2015 and about 350 employees had opted for them.
Jamaludin said Axiata can’t stay stagnant in the domestic market on the back of products’ convergence, as well as the emergence of cross-platform messaging and voice over IP services such as whatsapp.
“There are so many choices in the telecommunications industry. You cannot monopolise. Take voice call for example. How many of us are using local telcos such as Celcom and Digi for international calls? We use Skype and whatsapp and these products have bypassed us,” he said.
On May 6, Axiata and Norway’s Telenor announced that they were in discussions to establish a new merged global entity — MergedCo — by combining Axiata and Telenor’s Asian operations within their Asean and South Asia footprint markets.
The proposed transaction is aimed at enabling MergedCo to bring together Axiata and Telenor’s Asian operations’ unique combination of scale, competencies and vast experiences.
On the local front, the plan is to merge Celcom and Digi into MalaysiaCo.
Jamaludin refuted the notion that the merger would lead to a loss of Axiata’s identity and is akin to selling local assets to a foreign entity. Bernama