Tech Mahindra, Spanco plans to expand Nigerian call centres

Tech Mahindra and Spanco today denied reports of mass job cuts at their Nigerian call centres, which manage services for Airtel, and said they plan to expand outsourcing operations in the African country.

The Nigerian media had reported that Tech Mahindra and Spanco were planning to retrench 50% of the call center agents as part of cost-cutting measures.
The media reports had led to widespread protests by agents, following which the IT companies had to close their call centres on September 30.
The two IT companies in a joint statement said, "There is no issue of mass sack but expiration of existing contracts. Prior to the expiration of the contracts, we had engaged representatives of the Agents and that of the organised Labour on how to manage their transition to our roll."
"Due to a lack of consensus on the way forward and an apparent threat to our facilities by some of the agents, we were compelled to suspend operations at the call centres last Friday, September 30, 2011."
Sources said Airtel operations were not affected with the development.
Airtel had entered into an agreement with Tech Mahindra and Spanco in October last year for outsourcing of core customer service functions of African operations. Airtel currently has over 40 million customers across its African countries.
Tech Mahindra and Sapnco said they jointly inherited over 1,600 Call Centre agents from Bezaleel, HR Index and CCSNL who hitherto provided agents for the company known then as Zain.
The contract existing between Indian companies and two of the agencies namely CCSNL and HR Index expired effective Friday September 30, 2011. The third agency, Bezaleel