GO plc has told the government it has never considered declaring any of its employees redundant before or after 2009.

The assurance was given at a meeting which Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi and Investments Minister Austin Gatt had with GO chairman Sonny Portelli and Deepak Padmanabhan, CEO of Emirates International Telecommunications, and director of GO.

The company said that it has terminated with immediate effect the measure it had adopted earlier this year, under which surplus employees, in some units of the company were temporarily placed in a pool, pending re-deployment. All these employees will now be re-assigned fixed postings within the company

Mr Portelli and Mr Padmanabahn explained to the Prime Minister and to Minister Gatt how the company has been focusing its attention on re-engineering its organisational structures, and on improving the operating efficiencies of the GO Group.

This was due to the fact that the telecoms environment has become one of the most challenging businesses, requiring constant deployment of high levels of capital expenditure, to keep in step with new technologies, and highly skilled and motivated work-forces, able to cope with the constant change in technologies.

The company said it had to be continuously performance-driven, constantly seeking its best performers and encouraging them (through rewards) to achieve more, while at the same time monitoring all the others, and assist them to improve their efforts: through re-training and re-skilling. “In this industry life-time learning and re-training has become a fact of life,” the company said.

“So long as people accept these realities and continue to show willingness to strive to improve themselves and contribute to the success of the company, the company will ensure they will get all the assistance, and resources necessary, and the word redundancy will never be heard in the GO Group,” it added.