Tigo, Airtel merger: More jump ship as deal delays
As the
Tigo-Airtel merger in Ghana is being held up for technical and possible
shareholder reasons, some more people are jumping ship before they are caught
up in the uncertainties of the retrenchment issues.
First it was the
Head of Mobile at Tigo Ghana, Tara Obodai Squire, who crossed over to Ecobank
as the Head of Consumer Banking for Ghana and West Africa.
Tara Squire has
been replaced already with one expatriate.
Now the Head of
Corporate Communications and Corporate Affairs at Airtel Ghana, Richard
Ahiagble has also jumped ship. It is however not clear where Ahiagble is moving
on to but he confirmed to Adom News he has left Airtel.
As a result,
Airtel has put up an advert on its LinkedIn page inviting applications for the
position of Head of Corporate Communications – Legal and Corporate Affairs.
The company has
given potential applicants up to September 21, 2017 to send their CVs to one
Glenda Appiah-Kubi who has an Airtel email address, but some workers of the
company said they have not even heard her name before, much more knowing who
she is and what position she holds in the company.
One worker said
“we are not even aware of this vacancy – we would have expected that this would
have been advertised internally for workers first but they have externalize it,
and LinkedIn is not even a platform that many of us are on.”
Meanwhile, Adom
News can confirm that more are set to jump ship before the merger completes,
while others are just waiting to take their retrenchment package and leave
because they simply do not want to work for the merged company.
Unconfirmed
reports also indicate that several Airtel workers are crossing over to a
particular telco, a phenomenon that one telco executive described as common in
the industry.
Meanwhile,
workers of both companies are getting more anxious by the day as the
uncertainty about whether the merger is coming on or not deepens. Initially,
issues about the merged company being asked to give up one spectrum and
microwave was the reason for delays, and now reports say government is seeking
to hold shares in the company since it already has some small shares in Airtel.
Government used to have 25 per cent shares in Airtel and it was held by Ghana
National Petroleum Company (GNPC). But Bharti Airtel reportedly made some huge
capital investment without any cash from government so they converted it into
equity and that has depleted government’s shares to less than one per cent.
The stalemate is
creating more anxiety among workers of both companies but they are unable to
speak with one voice because both companies have rules that discourage labour
unionization, so no one wants to stick their necks out openly for fear of
victimization.But a worker of Airtel told Adom News “as things stand now, we
are seriously thinking about coming together to fight for our interest because
the uncertainty about our fate is very unsettling.” Meanwhile, the merger deal
still remain unapproved.
Source: adomonline.com
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