Kenya Airways Sacks 80 Employees in Rightsizing Process

Kenya Airways has sacked 80 employees in its first phase of redundancy reduction aimed at improving profitability. The airline operator will revisit its operating model and network, in seeking a long term sustainable financial structure for the business.

“We issued a notice to right size through staff redundancies and redeployment on March 31, 2016 as required by law and update was issued to staff on May 4, 2016 following intense consultations with all parties involved,” said the Group Managing Director & CEO Mbuvi Ngunze in a statement.

“Today, we will commence with the first phase of redundancies which will impact approximately 80 staff members,” he added.

Read: Kenya Airways to lay off 600 workers in restructuring process

Ngunze says operation pride will deliver over $200 million of value in various initiatives, half of which focus on increase in revenue and other half on cost reduction.

To achieve it, he said they had to make some difficult decisions to make substantial changes on all aspects of our business including reducing our fleet in line with the current fiscal realities. “It is in this light that we announced our intention to right size the organization to align with the reduced fleet size and improve productivity of our staff across the network.”

“The process will be in full compliance with labor laws, Collective Bargaining Agreements and individual staff members’ contracts as appropriate.”

Read: Kenya Airways to Boost Operations with New Flight Schedule

Kenya Airways has been unprofitable since 2012 as the carrier struggles with a decline in tourism traffic following a number of attacks by Al-Shabaab terrorist.

Among other changes in the restructuring process include prices review, sales, reducing costs, cash and financial optimization and revenue management.