JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: Africa's biggest mobile operator MTN plans to lay off at least 403 employees across divisions of its business, a South African newspaper reported on Monday.

The Times newspaper said the telecoms giant, which operates mobile phone networks across Africa and the Middle East, told its workers in an e-mail on Friday it would start laying off employees in its South African business from December 1.

It said MTN also planned to lay off around 70 per cent of its non-permanent staff.

MTN was not immediately available for comment.

South Africa is grappling with its first recession in 17 years and many companies have had to scale down their workforce to contain costs.

In August, MTN posted first-half results showing headline earnings per share (EPS) rose 22.5 per cent to 415.5 cents.

The country's official jobless rate increased to 24.5 per cent of the labor force in the third quarter of 2009, from 23.6 per cent in the second quarter.

The Times said the retrenchment plan had been approved by the MTN board two weeks ago.