Alexander Lewis 
Feb 19, 2024
Elon Musk-owned micro-blogging site X , formerly known as Twitter, has finally paid off its Ghana-based staff — formerly employed in African headquarters — over a year after it fired them.
It was observed by BBC that most of the sacked employees had just been recruited by the social media company for a few months at the time of their dismissal.
While the laid off workers threatened the company of an strict legal action, the Elon Musk-owned social media firm had earlier reported that it has fully paid its ex-employees.
Read more: App Clip on its way, but still no iPad app
While he tweeted that laid-off employees were given three months' severance pay, the Africa-based staff said they did not receive any.
Why X sacked its employees in Ghana
The lay offs reportedly resulted as part of Musk's ambitions to cut costs in a bid to ensure a thriving ecosystem in terms of profit-making, as he had said back then that he was bearing a loss of $4m (£3.5m) a day.
The Africa-based employees, less than 20 in numbers, had just joined X's new headquarter in Accra, eight months after working remotely from homes during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Not specifying the exact amount, Seven Seven, the agency which is legally representing former X workers, said that it succeeded in securing a redundancy settlement and repatriation expenses for foreign staff.
Carla Olympio, an official from Agency Seven Seven, said, "they are very pleased to finally be able to get their due, put this behind them and look to the future."
Treatment by X harmed us mentally and financially, sacked workers told the BBC last year, with one adding that "it's difficult when it's the world's richest man owing you money and closure."
Ex-employees maintained that they were pledged a salary of one month or so by the company, although their contracts were about to be terminated; however, they were locked out of their emails without getting paid further salaries.
Surprisingly, Musk in an interview to BBC last April said that the company had only 1,500 employees, down from under 8,000 who were hired at the time of his takeover of X.
The agency reported that X began negotiations with the sacked Africa staff following a story published on BBC.
