Hellenic Telecommunications Organization SA (ASE: HTO, NYSE: OTE), the Greek full-service telecommunications provider, today announced the successful completion of its Voluntary Retirement Program (VRP), effective October 14, 2006.
According to Greek Law 3371/2005,
- Eligible to participate in the VRP were all employees who had the right to apply for statutory retirement at any date up to December 31, 2012.
- From a pool of 5,216 eligible employees, a total of 4,759, or over 90%, elected to take early retirement and effectively left the company in a 12-month period ended October 14, 2006.
- An additional 803 applications were submitted and rejected. Of these, 666 were submitted by employees who would have been eligible for retirement only if their time spent in military service were recognized by the pension fund as pensionable years of service. The OTE pension fund, TAP-OTE rejected their request and this group of employees has appealed to court in order to reverse the fund''''s decision. The remaining applications were rejected by TAP-OTE because applicants did not meet the necessary requirements.
From the employees that left the company, 91.0% had more than 29 years of service with OTE and 94.3% of them were between 51 and 64 years old.
Following the implementation of the Voluntary Retirement Plan, the average employee age fell from 48.6 to 45 years old, while the total numbers of employees will reach 11,827, including 1,237 new employees that will have been hired by OTE prior to the end of 2006.
Mr. Panagis Vourloumis, Chairman and CEO, commented: With the completion of the Voluntary Retirement Plan, we have successfully carried out a crucial project that had been the center of OTE''s management efforts since early 2005. We are pursuing our efforts to meet all other Business Plan targets, with increased emphasis on the promotion of broadband services. Our aim is to rejuvenate and modernize our company in order to reach the standards of our European peer group.