RomTelecom to shed 4,000 more jobs

George Skarpelis, vice-president of Greek group OTE Telecom and general manager of RomTelecom on Tuesday announced the Romanian operator would shed 4,000 more jobs next year. This measure, one of the harshest restructuring steps taken by a Romanian company in the past few years is part of the programme to put RomTelecom’s business back on track. The Greeks have actually prepared a 10,000 job-cut programme for RomTelecom in order to revive the company in the event no capital injection is made. “RomTelecom will have 30,000 employees at the end of 2002, with this number set to go down to 26,000 in 2003,” Skarpelis specified during a hearing before the Parliament in Athens. The OTE VP was summoned by an economic parliamentary committee to explain OTE’s international expansion strategy, following the plunge of the company’s stock to the past six years’ low. Communications and Information Technology minister Dan Nica on Tuesday said the layoffs at RomTelecom were due to the replacement of the manually operated switchboards with digital ones, which would render a certain amount of jobs unnecessary. ZF