Less than a month af­ter Dig­i­cel en­tered a debt re­struc­tur­ing plan, the com­pa­ny has an­nounced plans to lay off 126 em­ploy­ees based in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, Dig­i­cel said the lay­offs are a re­sult of a planned tran­si­tion of its Trinidad con­sumer con­tact cen­tre to a con­sol­i­dat­ed re­gion­al cen­tre of ex­cel­lence in Ja­maica.

The com­pa­ny al­so an­nounced that its Re­gion­al Cor­po­rate Con­tact Cen­tre will be con­sol­i­dat­ed as well, in­to a cen­tre based in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The news was an­nounced to staff yes­ter­day.

Dig­i­cel CEO, Abra­ham Smith told Guardian Me­dia, “Dig­i­cel con­tin­ues to be in on­go­ing dis­cus­sions with em­ploy­ees and has host­ed sev­er­al town halls to en­sure that every­one is part of the busi­ness’ trans­for­ma­tion. Hu­man re­sources has al­so per­son­al­ly and in­di­vid­u­al­ly spo­ken with each af­fect­ed em­ploy­ee about their unique sit­u­a­tion. We will con­tin­ue to meet with folks over the com­ing weeks about their sev­er­ance ben­e­fits, as well as en­sure that they are pre­pared to in­ter­view with the var­i­ous com­pa­nies who we are work­ing with for place­ments.”

Smith ac­knowl­edged the com­pa­ny’s strug­gles had a part to play in the re­trench­ment.

He said: “It’s no se­cret that we are fac­ing some un­prece­dent­ed chal­lenges in our in­dus­try due to the glob­al pan­dem­ic, in­creased com­pe­ti­tion, forex chal­lenges and chang­ing cus­tomer pref­er­ences.

“These chal­lenges have led to us mak­ing some de­ci­sions to en­sure the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our busi­ness.

“One such de­ci­sion across Dig­i­cel Group, is the move­ment of var­i­ous func­tions from iso­lat­ed mar­kets in­to re­gion­al cen­tres of ex­cel­lence to strength­en the com­pa­ny and im­prove op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy. The re­gion­al con­tact cen­tre for busi­ness cus­tomers is in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the re­gion­al dig­i­tal live chat man­age­ment cen­tre is in Haiti and now, the re­gion­al con­sumer con­tact cen­tre is Ja­maica.”

He closed, “While this de­ci­sion was not an easy one, we firm­ly be­lieve that this move will ben­e­fit our cus­tomers and the com­pa­ny in the long-run as this con­sol­i­da­tion will stream­line our op­er­a­tions and re­duce costs, which will ul­ti­mate­ly help us to con­tin­ue to be a com­pet­i­tive and sus­tain­able busi­ness.”

The com­pa­ny said it has reached out to sev­er­al third-par­ty cus­tomer con­tact-cen­tre op­er­a­tors in a bid to have af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees pos­si­bly ob­tain jobs there.

El­der wants min­istry to in­ter­vene

Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Clyde El­der said while his union does not rep­re­sent work­ers at Dig­i­cel, he ques­tioned the man­ner of the re­trench­ment and called on the Min­istry of Labour to in­ter­vene.

El­der said: “First­ly, the man­ner in which work­ers were in­formed, that is, via Mi­crosoft Teams is ap­palling. Sec­ond­ly, un­der the law, work­ers are en­ti­tled to a no­tice pe­ri­od of 45 days. Dur­ing this pe­ri­od there must be mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion with the work­ers, at­tempts to re­de­ploy them with­in the com­pa­ny or even for the work­ers to seek the in­ter­ven­tion of the Min­is­ter of Labour.

“There is no pro­vi­sion in law for pay­ment in lieu of no­tice for that 45-day pe­ri­od, since there is a pur­pose for the no­tice pe­ri­od.”

El­der not­ed that the Dig­i­cel jobs are be­ing sent to an out­source agency, which demon­strates that the jobs are still nec­es­sary.

How­ev­er, said El­der, Dig­i­cel has deemed the work­ers to be re­dun­dant. This means the re­trench­ment “ap­pears to be ef­fect­ed in an il­le­gal man­ner,” Ed­er said.

At the end of Feb­ru­ary Dig­i­cel own­er De­nis O’Brien en­tered in­to a debt re­struc­tur­ing pro­gramme meant to re­duce the com­pa­ny’s to­tal debt by $1.8 bil­lion and place Dig­i­cel on a sus­tain­able foot­ing fol­low­ing se­vere loss­es in­curred in re­cent years.