On Tuesday, Vodafone Group PLC announced that it will cut down 375 jobs in the U. K. starting from March in order to save funds during economic crisis.

Boasting of around 9,000 employees in the U. K., Vodafone said that the target employees would be in a number of areas, across a number of locations, mainly in back office functions.

Meanwhile, it has been reported that 500 jobs have already been slashed by Vodafone in February 2009.

In November, Chief Executive Officer Vittorio Colao said that the company's GBP1 billion cost-reduction program would be met a year ahead of plan and expanded by GBP1 billion by 2012.

The world biggest mobile operator boasts of 70,000-plus workforce across 31 countries.

It is noteworthy that even big players like Vodafone are sacking their staff to minimise costs in an effort to emerge out of global recession.

It seems that Vodafone executives are not comfortable with probing questions of the media. They refused to comment when asked about the possibility of more job cuts.

In the midst of all these job cuts, Vodafone UK declared today that its Vodafone Secure Remote Access solution has been given the CESG Claims Tested Mark (CCTM) certificate by CESG.

Vodafone is the first UK mobile operator to get the CCTM mark that validates the claims companies make for their security solutions for data confidentiality, honesty and availability in the present Government IT milieu.

The company has also announced plans to recruit 170 people in U. K. for enhancing its customer service.

It is somehow surprising that on one hand people are being thrown out of jobs to minimise costs, while on the other, the company is recruiting more persons for growth in business.