Tecom's bid saw need to shed 750 Maltacom workers

Tecom had identified in its bid for Maltacom that it would need to shed as many as 750 Maltacom employees through voluntary retirement schemes.

Maltacom employees were recently asked to indicate their interest in a voluntary retirement scheme with the deadline for applications closing at the end of this month.

An analysis of Tecom's bid for the government's 60 per cent shareholding, which forms part of the documents tabled in Parliament following the sale, said: "Tecom intends to expand the current voluntary early retirement programmes with a new target to achieve the EU average for the number of lines per fixed-line employee.

"Tecom would like to achieve a realistic target of 300 lines per employee in the medium-term, which would lead to expected voluntary retirements of between 175 and 225 employees per year in the next three years, and 75 employees in 2009." Analysys Consulting compared Tecom and rival Ararco's bids in February 2006, prior to Tecom being designated as a preferred bidder and eventually buying the government's shareholding in May for Lm94.4 million.

Analysys said that Tecom had said in its bid that some of the excess staff might be relocated to other businesses in the Tecom group, including ICT-related companies or outsourced operations. No breakdown was provided.

It specified that it had no intention of restructuring by forced redundancies, a commitment repeated in the eventual contract of sale.

Ararco had envisioned a reduction in manpower of 300 over a five-year period, 27 of them through natural wastage and 273 through redundancy plans.

Maltacom chairman Sonny Portelli has repeatedly said that the group had no figures on the amount of surplus manpower, with CEO David Kay recently saying during an interview that he was not aware that any manpower audit had been carried out internally - although there was clearly excess manpower.