In a meeting with the press in which the status of the BPC Recapitalization and Restructuring Plan (PRR) was discussed, the administrator Cláudio Pinheiro stressed that reducing the number of employees saved 3100 jobs instead of closing the bank.
"The great challenge of the previous and current administrations and of the shareholders is to create a much greater effect at the social level, that dispensing 5200, if the bank were closed", he stressed.
According to Cláudio Pinheiro, the measures that are being implemented under the PRR, including the closure of business units (branches and business centers), aimed at mitigating their social effect.
For the process of dismissing employees, explained the Human Capital director of BPC, Alfredo Monteiro, a strategy was devised to accelerate their rapid insertion in the labor market.
"The board of directors opted for consensual measures instead of starting directly by dismissing employees, having initiated the termination measures by mutual agreement and then the early retirement measures," he said.
For employees dismissed by mutual agreement, the bank will also provide a complement to unemployment support, a kind of unemployment fund, equivalent to an additional financial compensation of 25 percent additional to the remuneration that the employee is remunerated, around the what would be your compensation.
In addition, this group will benefit from the forgiveness of credits made at the bank, credits for the start of economic activity, the possibility of restructuring the credit they have under their responsibility and training in business management for those who want to develop an economic activity.
"The bank will continue to make health services available for a period of six months to employees who choose to terminate by mutual agreement," he said.
Regarding the induced exit plan, four routes were defined, the first being the closure of branches to be closed, after evaluating the operational and maintenance costs, indicators of commercial performance, activity and profitability of each structure unit in relation to what it has. such as revenue and your geographic location.
The bank also looked at services outside the core business, namely cleaning, maintenance and security, services to be outsourced to some companies, abandoning work and employees with selection criteria for the future, "this being what requires attention more careful ", being foreseen for these factors of evaluation, seniority, academic qualifications and disciplinary history.
"Throughout this complex but vital process for the bank's survival, we will have carried out the optimization of our personnel structure in about 2103 people. For this year, the optimization of the workforce in about 1347 employees is foreseen, through presented initiatives ", he highlighted.
The bank has foreseen since the PRR started that this process will cost about 18 billion kwanzas, of which 4.1 billion will be compensated this year alone.
"To note that, after this process, we foresee an estimated annual savings of about eight billion kwanzas, with direct and indirect costs, with the dismissal of our employees, who are affected by this measure", said Fábio Santos, coordinator of the PRR.
With the closure of hundreds of business units, the bank will have annual savings in leasing these structures, at the end of this process, of around 520 million kwanzas.
In turn, the administrator Victor Cardoso stressed that the bank did not generate enough revenue to pay the majority of its costs and in view of this scenario "it was necessary to take courageous decisions".
"The bank has a very heavy structure, it does not generate enough revenue to cover its costs, largely due to the quality of its assets, but also due to the heavy cost structure that the bank has", he said, illustrating that, in 2018, the The bank had another 5,000 workers, a number that the two major banks in the banking market together do not.
For Victor Cardoso, the dismissal of employees is "something unavoidable". "Unfortunately, as much as it costs us, but it is something that we have to have courage for a greater good, which is the permanence of the organization", he underlined.
