By the end of the year, Finnish group Nokia will close down the cellphone factory of Jucu, in the county of Cluj, laying off 2200 employees. In a press conference, the president of "Nokia", Stephen Elop, said yesterday that the decision to shut down the factory of Jucu is part of a program intended to make the company more efficient and to cut costs.
After meeting with the company officials, the employees received a letter by which they were announced that the plant would continue operations until the end of the year, and they would be paid until the end of March 2012.
The mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Sorin Apostu, said: "I regret that, in order to handle the crisis, Nokia felt that the only solution was to prematurely shut down the plant of Jucu. This radical decision was not motivated by the conditions they had here (ed. note: Jucu), but rather by the dynamic of the global market for cellphone components".
The management of Nokia warned about the fact that this harsh decision was made over the past few days, and the local authorities were notified right away, but there had been rumors ever since last year that Nokia was planning to abandon its investment in Jucu.