Qubee Downsizes Staff by 50% Across Pakistan

Ahmed Rayyan

Qubee has fired half of its staff comprising 150 officials in different departments to cut off its operational expenses as per austerity plan to reduce the gap between expenditures and revenue earnings.

Official sources said the Qubee, a Wimax broadband operator has continued to cut jobs in its organization to restructure its business up to the current earning level after its parent company Augere Holdings has directed its subsidiary key officials to run the organization without foreign investment.

Qubee, in this regard, has reduced the number of employees from its sales, call center, technical and different departments by 150 out of nearly 300 total individuals in staff.

They were almost 100 members in the sales department of Qubee, which was reduced to 25 in all four stations including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Besides, the company has reduced call centre operators from 110 to 55 working as officials in its outsourcing company.

There is a department called SQUAD in which four technical professionals were working previously but now the whole department is based on one person as the company has sent them to home in the past couple of days.

Qubee also laid off two employees in its seven Customer Care Center in different cities whereas it fired senior manager of quality assurance yesterday, an official said on the condition of anonymity.

The rest of the employees remain with the company are based in the head and regional offices and considered as principal staff besides key officials, he said. There is an uncertain situation in the company as nobody is sure about his or her job in the company.

The company is focusing for retrenchment, which may also include massive cut of budget in marketing and advertising. It has also planed to shift its flagship office from Clifton to somewhere else as the monthly rent of Rs 2.7 million is very high.

Establishing in early 2009 with investment of $70 million, Qubee has maintained its cost-saving strategy in its operations including tower-sharing and outsourcing of the business units. It started its services in June 2009 from Karachi and expanded its network and services in three more cities to bag more than 75,000 customers.