The telco has started to lay off staff in the North West and, with as many as 80 technicians to be axed as part of a claimed streamlining of services across NSW, residents are wondering about Telstra’s ability to restore comm-unications quickly in the event of a storm or bushfire.

Redundancies have started in Nyngan, about 10 field technicians are set to be laid off in the Hunter Valley, and more jobs are expected to go at Albury, Armidale, Tamworth and Casino, among others, later in the year.

In the Hunter Valley, the job cuts will effectively halve the number of technicians available to repair and upgrade lines in the region, says Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union NSW assistant secretary, Shane Murphy.

The union had called on the Federal Government to intervene after it announced Telstra would receive $11 billion for contributing towards the National Broadband Network rollout and $100 million to retrain the Telstra workforce.

“Three weeks later, Telstra workers face the sack,” Mr Murphy said.

‘’Telstra should not be forcibly retrenching skilled, highly experienced staff ahead of this major project – it should either make use of their experience or retrain them.

“Clearly Telstra has hung up on communities in regional and remote NSW.”

Formed in June 2000, Telstra Country Wide has the role of rolling out and maintaining the big telco’s infrastructure in regional and rural areas.

The service has been streamlined in recent years by the division’s general manager, Brett Riley, and now has 52 offices across regional Australia.

Opposition spokesman for Western NSW and Member for Barwon, Kevin Humphries, said the Telstra redundancies were a vote of no confidence in rural communities.

“Telstra Country Wide can take the ‘country’ off the brand, as the decision will have extremely negative repercussions for regional NSW, leaving Barwon communities starved of critical communication infrastructure staff,” Mr Humphries said.

“Telstra has already forced one position out of Nyngan, a highly experienced technician of 37 years.”

He called on Telstra to announce its direction in rural NSW, saying critical service cutbacks without local notification or discussion with local councils were unacceptable.