Telstra is accelerating its efforts to cut nearly 10,000 jobs.

The company says its massive staff purge is speeding up, and is on track to have 6,000 of 9,500 slated job cuts “announced” by the end of the financial year.

Telstra’s T22 simplification and downsizing scheme includes $700 million in expenses and write-downs for just the 2019 financial year.

That includes $200 million for labour shedding – redundancy and separation payouts – as well as $500 million in write-offs for junked legacy systems and related hardware.

Telstra CEO Andy Penn says Telstra is trying to sack people with respect, compassion and dignity.

“We understand the significant impact on our people and the uncertainty created by these changes. We are doing everything we can to support our people through the change and this includes the up to $50 million we have committed to a Transition program that provides a range of services to help people move into a new role,” Mr Penn said.

“We expect to have announced or completed approximately 75 percent of our direct workforce role reductions by the end of FY19.”

The cuts were linked in part to the National Broadband Network.

“We will continue to see role reductions as we replace our legacy systems, digitise and simplify how we work, and respond to things like declining NBN and call volumes, but if a final decision is made on the proposal announced today we expect the majority of our T22 restructure will be behind us,” Mr Penn said.

The announcement came alongside the swearing-in of the former Optus executive Paul Fletcher as Federal Communications Minister.