Why Gov’t Cancelled Telenor Deal

...And a saga of how GT paid expatriates millions even after their contracts expired
Among the key reasons why the Board of Ghana Telecom reneged on the renewal of the management agreement between Ghana and the Telenor Management Partners (TMP) of Norway was the scandalous revelation that the northern Europeans continued to pay members of their team whose contracts with the state-owned company had expired, months after the expiration, this paper has gathered.

At least the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) tax computation for the month of August, this year, revealed that though the contract for two members of the Norwegian team had expired in April and May this year, they received salaries through that period to the month of August.

The two are Jon Hareide and Age Haland.

Hareide had a contract spanning 15/05/2006– 31/05/06, showing that as of August ending when he received his salary, his contract had expired by three months.

Haland’s contract was for the period 28/04/2003-30/04/2006. In other words, his contract had expired by a four-month period when he received his salary in August.

The two men earned net incomes of 52,416 Norwegian Kroner (NOK) and NOK 41,181 respectively every month and banked home taxable incomes of ¢127.1 million and ¢99.7 million.

In ordinary terms, the two men banked home ¢381.3 million and ¢299.1 million they were not entitled to over the periods their contracts had expired.

Another issue that got the Norwegians kicked out was their failure to meet the GT’s Board insistence that the number of expatriates at GT be reduced to a maximum of 11.

Despite the Board’s insistence over weeks, as of last month, November 6, the number of expatriates had been reduced by only three, scaling back the Norwegian staff strength to 19.

By last week, however, pressure had forced the Board to announce a decision to form a three-member Interim Management Committee (IMC) to take control of the company.

The Board at its meeting last Wednesday afternoon, however, announced the formal abrogation of the contract with TMP, beginning the end of December this year, following growing uproar and media focus led by this paper.

The announcement by the Board went contrary to an earlier assertion by the Minister of Communications, Professor Mike Ocquaye, to Parliament last October that the government intends to renew the contract with the Norwegians.

At the time, the Minister also told Parliament that the number of Norwegians had been reduced to 15, a statement this paper later gathered was incorrect.

The Board also announced the cancellation of the contract with Telenor following threats of strike by GT workers who were fuming over the fat salaries and allowances of their white bosses.

They also complained over information that while their Telenor bosses were laughing all the way to the bank, they were about to be denied Christmas bonuses and other essentials because GT was supposedly cash-strapped.

According to Major Albert Don Chebi (Rtd.), Head of Corporate Communications at GT, who released the statement on the cancellation of the contract, the outgoing Norwegian team has been “given three weeks to wind up their operation and hand over to a Ghanaian Interim Management that has been appointed to take over from them.”

Don Chebi said that the expatriate management team was given a period within which to manage the state owned company while a Ghanaian team understudies them.