Malaysian Boss Refuses To Leave GT

Crisis meetings are being held on daily basis at the head office of Ghana Telecom in Accra, to try and resolve the impasse over the management of Ghana’s star communication network, following the refusal of D’ato Malek Muhamed, the Malaysian Managing Director, to hand over as directed by the Minister of Communications and Technology, Felix Owusu Adjapong.

On Thursday, July 18, the minister announced a three-member Interim Management Committee, chaired by Dickson Oduro-Nyaning, Chief Network Officer with Kwaku Awuah-Boateng, Chief Finance Officer and Kofi Dua-Adonteng, Head of the Legal Department, all of Ghana Telecom, to manage the affairs of the company until a substantive Managing Director is appointed.

The term of D’ato Malek Muhamed, as head of Ghana Telecom expired in April this year but he has resisted persistent appeals to hand over to the IMC. Officials are tight-lipped on the whole affair but Agenda sources at Ghana Telecom intimated that D’ato and the five other Malaysians in senior positions have resolved to stay put until they receive instructions from their principals in Kuala Lumpur.

The Malaysians, according to Agenda sources, do not recognize the power of the Minister to appoint management for the company. They contend that the power for appointing the Managing Director, under the terms that brought Telekom Malaysia as a minority partner in the Ghana Telecom deal, is vested in Telekom Malaysia and not the minister.

The outgoing MD, the paper’s sources say, would only quit his job when Telekom Malaysia appoints a suitable person to replace him. Reached for his comment, Minister Owusu Adjapong said he has vested the full powers of administering Ghana Telecom in the IMC. “They have the full authority and should know what to do. I do not intend to interfere with the way they organize themselves. Owusu Adjapong explained that since nobody has renewed the mandate of D’ato Malek Muhamed, he has no business being in office.

Earlier, the minister had told an Accra daily newspaper that since Telekom Malaysia, which owns 30 percent of the shares in Ghana Telecom had decided to offload their shares, the Government of Ghana found it not prudent to appoint a representative of Telekom Malaysia to manage the affairs of the Ghanaian company.

He said Government has accepted the offer by Telekom Malaysia to sell its shares. The two sides have agreed to nominate one representative each to work out the market value in order to determine how much should be paid for them. A spokesman for the IMC told Agenda that as Ghanaians they would never allow the fortunes of a national asset like Ghana Telecom to be toyed with the foreigners whose only stake in the company is to exploit its resources for their personal benefit.