Airtel Kenya call centre operatoios have been paralysed after close to 300 employees contracted through SPANCO downed their tools. The customer care representatives have been demanding pay rise from the company with many claiming that the Ksh 15,000 pay is just not enough for them as other operators pay their workers as much as Ksh 70,000.
Most of the striking call centre workers are paid between Ksh 12,000 and 15,000. The most surprising bit is that some deductions like HELB come as high as Ksh 3,000 meaning that the outsourcing company, SPANCO, might be showing a different figure as what they pay their employees.
The employees are demanding between 200% to 500% pay rise.
A statement from SPANCO partly reads;
There has been a disruption in our operations today arising from staff complaints on a range of issues. Our staff, who are all Spanco employees, have declined to resume duties, affecting the contact centre services to our customers including Airtel Kenya.
The management of Spanco is deeply concerned about these issues raised by the staff and are addressing the same in full respect and compliance with the labour laws of Kenya.
We regret any inconveniences caused to affected customers and our business partners and request patience and understanding as we work to reach a full resolution and resumption of normal service.
Spanco is an Indian company which was contracted by Airtel to handle the entire Airtel’s customer care services for voice, data and Airtel money services. The strike has affected customer care services at Airtel.
Airtel recently transfered another batch of over 50 employees to SPANCO leading to a lawsuit by the affected employees. The staff claim that when they attempted to raise issues with the management over the pay, 7 colleagues who the management believed to had been the ring-leaders were promptly sacked.
Among the operators, it is only Safaricom which has not outsourced its call-centre services with Essar, Orange and Airtel all outsourcing their call centre operations to cut costs. Essar has outsourced to Aegis while Orange Kenya has outsourced to Kencall and Horizon.