The staff at Airtel has totally rebut an article published in the Seychelles Nation of Wednesday 6th February, 2008, headlined ‘AIRTEL ANNOUNCES SALARY INCREASE FOR ITS STAFF’, the Seychellois Staff working with Telecom Seychelles said that there is more to the article than meets the eye. The announcement was merely a cover up for other misdeeds, discrimination and victimization going on within the company that various government offices had been made aware of, but nothing has been done so far.
Whilst it is true that salary increase has been awarded, albeit with some discontent amongst many, no mention had been made of slashing of overtime, incentive and other benefits. The Seychellois workers would like to have some clarification on that matter - if the company did so well for the year 2007 as per the article in the Seychelles Nation recently, why is it than that some of us received bonuses as low as 50% of our salaries. When in reality, we were promised a 150% bonus on the back of the company doing well, which is certainly the case as per the article. According to the article the company performed well above all expectations for 2007. However, it seems that only a minority of workers benefited through an increase of 25 to 30% of their salary, whilst the majority has not. The majority of workers feel hard done by as they are of the opinion that they at the bottom end of the company had done the hard work and a few in top positions are now reaping all the fruits of their labour. The workers see that as very unfair and totally unjust. There should have been a better increase of salary and compensation e.g. bonuses and other incentives as previously promised by the company. Most of the Seychellois workers has benefited with an increase of only 2 to 5% of their salary.
The workers are hoping that the company will clarify this issue soon and redress the imbalance, which now exist in the salary structure at Airtel.
Contributed by Seychellois working at Airtel