It is believed that the biggest telecommunications network in Ghana MTN spent over GhS107 million to assist the fight against the spread of coronavirus, the pandemic that has caused havoc to humanity ever since it emerged in October 2019 in Wuhan, China.
This is to help complement government’s effort to fight the disease.
The support includes the supply of Personal Protective Equipments for all frontline staff, 45 buses arranged for the transportation of frontline staff, Covid-19 awareness and training.
The Corporate Services Executive of MTN, Samuel Koranteng made the disclosure during a virtual media briefing dubbed “Editors Forum”.
According to him, the year 2020 has been very challenging for the company, not only due to the COVID pandemic but also due to major outages in January and February, such as undersea cable outage for three days and zero-rating of over 200 educational websites among others.
On customer care, Samuel Koranteng indicated that MTN has enhanced its support channels to enable customers to receive uninterrupted support through the use of MTN apps, social media handles and 24/7 access to the company’s service centres.
He touched on MoMo and maintained that, “Our MoMo service continues to focus on building a comprehensive portfolio for all financial inclusion needs. The role of MoMo in enabling the digital economy, cannot be overemphasized; it is the payments glue that makes digital come to life”.
He also revealed that the company has invested US$15m in 150 projects through the MTN Foundation across the country, spanning, Education, Healthcare and Economic Empowerment.
As a company that has the welfare of customers at heart and the nation in general, MTN committed substantial amounts of money to complement efforts of government to stop the spread of the virus.
GhS 29 million was spent on staff in the area of provision of Personal Protective Equipments for front line staff, Welfare fund, staff training and others.
GhS72 million has been spent on customers since March to make their lives comfortable even as they had to work from home. As a result of the restrictions on movement, customers relied on Internet to access information and MTN reduced the cost of data bundles.
Some initiatives embarked on to assist customers include 50% increase in International bandwidth with 100 new sites, free access to over 200 educational websites, free Mobile Money P2P transfers up to GhS100 daily, among others.
Government directly benefited from MTN’s initiatives summing up to GhS6 million. These supports include free access of the smart workplace portal for all Government of Ghana workers, donation of GhS5m of Personal Protective Equipments for front line health workers, donation of 10 Turbonet devices with 2 terabytes of data to Ministry of Information and so on.
Below is the sectoral breakdown of investment made by MTN:
Staff GhS29 million:
*Supply of PPEs for all frontline staff
*45 buses arranged for frontline staff transportation
*Welfare fund established that raised GhS320k from 260+ staff
*800 extended workforce staff have benefited from the welfare fund
*Staff Covid-19 awareness and training (Videos, email, SMS, Online)
*Daily health monitor survey to capture data to support staff at risk, at peak ~90% of staff were working, from home on a daily basis.
Customers GhS72 million:
*Network resilience (50% increase in international bandwidth, 100 new sites), Free access (zero-rate) to over 200 educational websites, 4.5m customers consuming over 150 Terabytes of data, Free MoMo P2P transfers up to GhS100 daily, free Covid-19 news channel on our, ayoba super app
Customers GhS6m:
*Fee access (zero rate) of the Smart, workplace portal for all GoG workers
*Donation of GhS5m of PPEs for frontline health workers
*Donation of 10 TurboNet devices with over 2 Terabytes of data to MOI
*Free access to shortcodes for Covid-19 response for MOI and GHS, customer education including (SMS) CRBT, BE WISE campaign etc.), donation of digital equipment to Noguchi Memorial worth GhS42k Distribution of 85k masks to various.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com
