MTN Foundation executes 142 projects in 10 years

By Justina Paaga GNA

Takoradi March 26, GNA - MTN Ghana’s leading telecommunication giant has under its Foundation within 10 years executed a total of 142 projects across the country.

Of the projects, 80 were on education that included the construction of libraries, dormitories, classroom blocks and scholarships, while the 52 projects covered hospitals, wards, maternity blocks and the provision of equipment for CHPs compounds.

Ten projects on economic empowerment are in the areas of micro enterprise, ICT incubation, Shea- butter and oil palm processing.

Mrs Pala Asiedu Ofori, the Acting Senior Corporate Service Executive, made this known during a media and stakeholder engagement forum held in Takoradi to deliberate on the achievements of the company in 2017 and its plans for 2018.

She said on its brightening of  life  and blood donation projects to support the national blood bank, the company  was able to collect 3,294 pints  of blood on valentine’s day  this year,  bringing the total pints of blood collected within seven years to 9,520 pints.

On people update, Mrs Ofori said GH¢4,700.000.00 was allocated for training in 2017, of which 95 per cent of all employees both permanent and non-permanent staff of MTN received at least one training in the year.  

Touching on contribution to national development, the acting Senior Corporate Service Executive said a total of GH¢1.218 billion was paid to the government with the Ghana Revenue Authority receiving 1.059 billion and NCA and Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC) got GH¢159.4 million.

Mrs Ofori announced that MTN would this year invest $144 million of capital expenditure towards expanding quality network service.

She said MTN had a market share of about 17, 8 million mobile subscribes and it was therefore important to invest in its operations to meet the growing customer needs. 

The Acting Senior Corporate Affairs Executive said the target of the company this year was to focus on the improvement of customer experience through investing on network improvement, providing quality service, improving distribution networks as well as bringing more valued added services for voice calls and data nationwide.

Mrs Ofori said plans were far advanced to roll out 230 new sites for expansion, 200 rural sites expansion, 695 km of fibre cable, 1.100 3G new sites and fibre to home extension to 20,000 homes.

She told businesses that the company had a lot to offer urged them to take advantage of numerous solution the company had to offer to enhance the growth of their businesses and expressed concern about the number of fibre cuts, and the interruption of calls as major challenges to the company.    

Mr Teddy Hayford Acquah , Western and Central  Regional Head of Technical  Service Said MTN was  in partnership with GIFEC and  was  extending  mobile telephone  coverage to cover rural communities  under a rural telephony project .

Focusing on the Western region, he said 29 new 2G sites would be built whiles seven existing sites would be upgraded and 24 existing multi sector sites would be implemented.

According to him, 106 new 3G sites would be built and nine new 4G sites would also be built in addition to the building of 28 new rural sites to optimise existing rural sites,

Mr Acquah also mentioned fibre cuts and battery thefts as the major challenges of the company and that since 2015 to date an amount of $63,397.675 had been spent on repairs and replacement of damaged fibre cables.

On battery theft, he said the total value of batteries stolen since 2013 stood at 82.863 dollars.

Mr Simon Amoh, Western Regional Manager MTN Ghana, who spoke on MTN mobile money, said the company was in partnership with 18 banks and currently had a subscriber base of over 7.3 million with 91 thousand merchants spread across the country making an average weekly transaction of 1. 8 billion cedis.

GNA

Read Full Story