MTN to give disabled persons stable jobs

Accra, April 2, GNA - Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN) Ghana, the leading telecommunications service provider in the country, has announced its readiness to offer stable jobs to more disabled persons at its new state-of-the-art call centre at Tema in the Greater Accra Region.

Miss. Mawuena Adjo Dumor, Corporate Services Executive of the company, disclosed this at the second MTN Editors Forum. She noted that the previous operator of MTN provided jobs for disabled persons by furnishing them with specially made wheelchairs and tricycles to enable them to work as vendors of the then Areeba transfer units and scratch cards and also offer mobile communication centre services.

"But MTN is taking it to another level by really integrating them fully into the MTN family to work at our new state-of-the-art call centre, where they will have the opportunity to work as permanent staff of MTN Call Centre in a more comfortable and less stressful atmosphere," she said.

Miss Dumor, however, said the vendor wheel chair system would not be entirely abolished as yet.

On subscriber figures, she noted that between December 2006 when MTN took over from Areeba and December 2007, subscriber numbers in Ghana had increased from 2.6 million to four million, making Ghana second to Nigeria in the West and Central Africa (WECA) region of MTN operations. "The MTN Group is pleased to announce that it has recorded 61.4 million subscribers across its 21 operations as at 31st December 2007. This is an increase of 53 per cent from 40.1 million subscribers as at December 2006," she said.

Ms. Dumor said as a result, MTN Group revenue increased by 42 per cent over the same period and hit US$9.12 billion, adding that, within that period over two billion dollars of that amount was spent on network infrastructure improvement alone, besides other heavy investments into technological improvement.

"In Ghana, network enhancement continued to take priority during the review period with the installation of 718 new Base Transmission Stations (BTSs), bringing the total number of BTSs since 2006 to 1,660."

Asked if MTN would consider listing on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) to enable Ghanaians have a share in the profits it was making from local subscribers, Ms. Dumor said that, it was a possibility but the nitty-gritty needed to be looked at critically before such a crucial decision could be taken.

She said going forward from the just ended African Nations Cup tournament, dubbed: 'MTN Ghana 2008,' the ompany would continue to make substantial investment into social interventions through the MTN Foundation, which was geared towards providing high impact and sustainable assistance in the areas of education and health.

Ms. Dumor said MTN would, for instance support the upcoming UNCTAD conference in Ghana, which was in line with the company's commitment to supporting development discourse in all the countries MTN operated in. Some editors who attended the forum appealed to MTN to provide subsidized mobile phones and phone lines for journalists to cover the upcoming general elections more effectively. Others called for "a fair distribution" of the MTN advertisement funds to benefit as many media houses as possible. The argument was that, "since all media houses are considered as channels to reach MTN target groups when it comes to issuing press releases from MTN, it is only fair to do same when it comes to reaching the same target groups through adverts."