Telkom Kenya workers to go on strike

Six months after France Telecom paid US$390 million for a 51 percent stake in Telkom Kenya, employees are threatening to paralyze operations, demanding a 202 percent pay hike.

The Communication Workers Union says the 10 percent salary increase proposed by management is an insult to union demands. The union has served the minister of labor with the mandatory 21-day notice, beginning Monday.

The union says PriceWaterHouseCoopers proposed the salary increment of 202 percent after an assessment that led to layoffs of 15,000 employees. Telkom had 18,000 employees, but staff was reduced to 3,000 after an evaluation by PriceWaterHouseCoopers.

Union chairman Benson Okwaro says workers are fed up with the delay in implementation of their proposed salary hike and that members are being exploited.

"The workforce was reduced by 15,000, that is an indicator that workers are being overworked," said Okwaro.

Okwaro claimed the union accepted staff reductions four years ago in the hope that the remaining 3,030 staff would have better terms of remuneration. Unrest crept into Telkom Kenya after France Telecom took over and awarded a 300 percent pay raise to senior management and a 10 percent raise to junior employees.

Telkom Kenya is known locally as a sleeping giant. The government gave the company a monopoly of fixed-line operation in 1999 for a period of five years, but the company is yet to make meaningful penetration in remote areas.

Telkom is Kenya's representative in the pan-African fiber-optic cable project EASSY.