IT was announced yesterday that Jersey Telecom will be shedding 80 jobs over the next five months. And only days ago the Island learned that there were to be 20 redundancies at the Jersey New Waterworks Company.

The reaction of some more hard-nosed members of the community might be: ‘What do you expect in a deep recession?’ However, in the case of these utilities, the general economic situation is most unlikely to have been the main driving force behind staffing level decisions.

The recent history of Telecom in particular has seen the group beset by many difficulties that have not been of its own making and largely unrelated to the global downturn. In 2003 the States opened up the telecommunications scene to competition. As a result, what was formerly a government monopoly suddenly faced a whole new range of challenges.

How well Telecom’s management has responded to the challenges must, of course, be open to question, but it is clear that the group has faced an uphill struggle ever since new players began to enter the marketplace.

Its problems might have been transferred to others – at least from the point of view of taxpayers, who ultimately own Telecom – had a planned sell-off gone ahead, but when it was put on hold it was a question of business as usual, though with a variety of other concerns bidding for the same customers. Unfortunately, it is now probable that the group is worth far less than when its sale was first on the agenda.

It was always asserted that the Island’s telecommunications market had to be deregulated for the sake of the consumer and to ensure that the latest technology was available here. Even if these assertions were both logical and true, it would seem that we are now witnessing a consequence of the policies they initiated.

Meanwhile, we must not lose sight of the fact that the redundancies at Telecom and at the Waterworks have a human dimension that overshadows commercial issues. Both organisations will be all too aware of this, but they have nevertheless been guilty of some callousness. Was it really necessary to tell staff that jobs were to be axed in the build-up to Christmas?

Moreover, Telecom’s senior echelon might now be wondering just how wise it was to pay top executives £340,000 in bonuses back in June.

Ministers have promised that every effort will be made to help staff who have lost or are about to lose their jobs. The scope of that help is at present unclear, but one thing is certain – this is no time for hollow promises.