Internet-based converged communications provider UUNET SA is retrenching staff, including two senior executives who already left the company earlier this month.
The group, a subsidiary of US Internet and voice services giant MCI, has admitted its newly appointed CEO, Bheki Nkomo, and Guy Clarke, director of Africa operations, have been retrenched as part of an overall company strategy to align its management structure with that of MCI.
"As we continue to better position the company, including improved integration and the automation of certain functions, we expect to add and reduce workforce positions as needed. If any reductions are to take place, it is UUNET/MCI`s policy to disclose the relevant information first to employees and to comply with all relevant legal and regulatory requirements," UUNET SA says in a statement.
UUNET SA spokesman Kerryn-Leigh Anderson refuses to comment on the circumstances surrounding the retrenchment of Nkomo, who headed the company for six months.
She says the company is still in the early stages of the restructuring process and she can thus not comment on individual retrenchments. However, she indicates that, aside from Nkomo and Clarke, no further job cuts at executive level are expected.
Anderson refuses to be drawn on the potential number of non-executive retrenchments.
In terms of Clarke`s retrenchment, she comments: "To better serve our African customers, MCI is reorganising its local operations in order to fully integrate them into MCI`s regional and international organisations."
Clarke confirms that his retrenchment was the result of UUNET consolidating its Africa operations management team with the group`s main management structure, in line with MCI`s requirements.
He denies rumours that any of the regional teams, based in Namibia, Botswana, Kenya and Zambia, had been dissolved.
"These businesses are doing extremely well," he says, adding that his parting with UUNET had been amicable.
UUNET has also quashed industry rumours that its black economic empowerment (BEE) deal, to be announced this year, has been abandoned or postponed as a result of MCI`s proposed merger with Verizon.
Anderson says to the contrary that the announcement of a BEE deal is "imminent".
"MCI remains committed to black economic empowerment in its broader sense," she says.
Share