NEW DELHI: Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union Minister for Information Technology, criticised Twitter's move to lay off its Indian staff, saying that they should have been given a "reasonable period for transition."
Vaishnaw's reaction came as Elon Musk fired about half of Twitter's workforce globally, including nearly 150-180 employees in India.
IT Minister Vaishnaw said, "We criticise the manner in which Twitter has terminated employees in India," adding that the company "should have provided the employees a fair opportunity for transition."
The cutbacks in India affected a across departments, including corporate communications, sales, and marketing. Last Monday, Twitter employees in India lost access to their work emails, internal Slack channels, and group chats. Those who are still employed by Twitter India are always terrified that they would lose their jobs in the upcoming round, which they believe will occur sooner given Musk's goals.
The company said that the employee badge access to Twitter's premises has been "temporarily" disabled. Musk claimed that because Twitter was losing more than $4 million every day, there had no other option than to ruthlessly fire half of the company's employees.
When a company is losing more than $4 million each day, there is regrettably no choice regarding Twitter's reduction in staff, Musk wrote in a tweet.
Everyone who was let go received a 3 month severance package, which is 50 percent more than was legally required, he said. He also said that due to activist groups' excessive pressure on its advertisers, Twitter's revenue has dropped dramatically.
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