Durrant Pate/Contributor

Regional telecoms giant Digicel is cutting its staff complement across seven markets including its home base in Jamaica in a restructuring exercise aimed at improving efficiency to remain “relevant and competitive” in its markets.

In confirming the redundancy exercise in a statement, Digicel explained that its decentralisation plan would impact some roles at the group level as well as in markets namely Cayman, El Salvador, Haiti, Jamaica, St Lucia, Trinidad and the United States.

The company had started a consultation period with staff with sources saying the consultation process varies from market to market but can be up to 45 days.

Digicel reports that it spent the “last number of months carefully reviewing our organisation to structure and redesign our business to be fit for growth.”

Digicel employs 980 staff and 5,000 overall with a spokeswoman for the company telling The Irish Times that 1.5 per cent of roles would be impacted. This would indicate 75 redundancies across the business. 

Digicel, the Caribbean-based telco founded in Jamaica by Irishman, Denis O’Brien says it, “Continuously looks for ways to be more efficient to allow us to provide even better service to our customers. The pace of change in our hyperconnected world is furious, and the onus is on us to evolve in real-time to ensure we remain relevant and competitive. Central to that is ensuring we have the right talent in the right places across and through our organisation.”

“As always we are committed to assisting our people through this period and to ensuring they are treated with the utmost dignity and respect through the process. Likewise, we will of course honour our commitments to them in line with local labour laws and practices,” the Digicel statement read.

O’Brien founded Digicel in 2001, later establishing the business across 32 markets in the Caribbean, Central America and the Pacific islands. He lost control of Digicel last year after a group of bondholders took 90 per cent of the highly-leveraged business in a US$1.7 billion (€1.65 billion) debt-for-equity swap. 

The Irish businessman retains a 10 per cent shareholding in the regional telecoms giant.