Telecommunications giant, MTN Nigeria, on Friday, sacked 280 workers, representing about 15 percent of its total workforce.

Reports say most of the affected staff who had been in the company’s employment for between five and fifteen years were laid off to give room for the company to inject new blood from the more technologically-savvy generation into its operations.

MTN Nigeria had in March, put out a one-week notice to its workers who might wish to voluntarily disengage from the company, under its Voluntary Severance Scheme (VSS) to do so.

Following the expiration of the notice on Thursday, April 28, about 200 long-serving staff voluntarily disengaged from the company’s employment. However, as the figure did not meet the company’s 15 percent downsizing target, it last Friday, sacked an additional 80 employees.

The company however paid severance packages of between N5 million and N15 million which the sacked workers believed to be paltry compared to what, according to them, a big and organized corporate body should do.