Former employees of Helpline Telecoms, a telecommunication retailing service in Ibadan, have accused the company of withholding their due salaries, arrears and other entitlements.

In separate engagements with FIJ, Abiola Victoria Ikuseedun and Oladetoun Gabriel, both ex-employees of the company, explained that the withheld salaries and other emoluments they were entitled to were due for payment before they resigned from the company.

Ikuseedun, who worked as a marketer for Africa mama ATM Ltd., a subsidiary of Helpline Telecoms, said before she resigned from the company on December 21, 2022, she was being owed N175,887 by the company.

The company withheld her salary not long after she turned in her resignation letter. According to her, they alleged that a fraud was committed in her name, the details of which were strange to her, she said.

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“I didn’t sign any undertaking. At a time, the company came up with a plan that we should engage a canvasser that would be registering people for daily contribution. This new role was never part of my appointment letter,” she said.

“We were only told to stay with the new canvasser and train them and allow them to work on their own. The mandate given to me was to recruit a canvasser. A letter of guarantor was issued to the canvasser, so any claim of fraudulent act in the canvasser’s operation should be levelled against the guarantor and not on me.”

Similar to Ikuseedun’s account, Gabriel said the company responded to his resignation letter with an allegation of fraud. According to him, Helpline made the allegation a week after he made his intention to leave the company known to them.

“They do not want to pay me because I resigned from their company. My salary, commission and lieu payments have been held since February,” Gabriel said.

“The allegation came to me as a rude shock by getting this as a result of my exceptional service to agents of the organisation, and having worked tirelessly for the company.”

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Gabriel, who is presently enrolled in a Business Analytics course in Lagos State, stated that Helpline Telecoms owed him N203,663, and that he needed the money to pay his tuition.

“I am not a fraudster nor would I under any pretence defraud the company or receive any gratification consciously or otherwise,” he said.

“I really need the money to aid my course fees and to cater for other needs. It is my sweat; I worked for it,” he told FIJ.

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On June 28, FIJ wrote Helpline Telecoms for a response to the allegations made against them, and through Soji Opabunmi & Co, their solicitors, Helpline denied the allegations that they withheld and delayed staff salaries. The company maintained that both Ikuseedun and Gabriel had registered fictitious and non-existent canvassers to meet up their daily targets, and as a result, defrauded the company.

Furthermore, they wrote that the company’s policy was that committing fraud or failure to meet daily targets attracted a penalty of N3,000 per day. It was as a result of these infractions that they deducted money from the salaries paid to Gabriel and Ikuseedun, they said.