As the Tigo-Airtel merger in Ghana is being held up for technical and possible shareholder reasons, some more people are jumping ship before they are caught up in the uncertainties of the retrenchment issues.
First it was the Head of Mobile at Tigo Ghana, Tara Obodai Squire, who crossed over to Ecobank as the Head of Consumer Banking for Ghana and West Africa.
Tara Squire has been replaced already with one expatriate.
Now the Head of Corporate Communications and Corporate Affairs at Airtel Ghana, Richard Ahiagble has also jumped ship.
It is however not clear where Ahiagble is moving on to but he confirmed to Adom News he has left Airtel.
As a result, Airtel has put up an advert on its LinkedIn page inviting applications for the position of Head of Corporate Communications – Legal and Corporate Affairs.
The company has given potential applicants up to September 21, 2017 to send their CVs to one Glenda Appiah-Kubi who has an Airtel email address, but some workers of the company said they have not even heard her name before, much more knowing who she is and what position she holds in the company.
One worker said “we are not even aware of this vacancy – we would have expected that this would have been advertised internally for workers first but they have externalize it, and LinkedIn is not even a platform that many of us are on.”
Meanwhile, Adom News can confirm that more are set to jump ship before the merger completes, while others are just waiting to take their retrenchment package and leave because they simply do not want to work for the merged company.
Unconfirmed reports also indicate that several Airtel workers are crossing over to a particular telco, a phenomenon that one telco executive described as common in the industry.
Meanwhile, workers of both companies are getting more anxious by the day as the uncertainty about whether the merger is coming on or not deepens.
Stalemate
Initially, issues about the merged company being asked to give up one spectrum and microwave was the reason for delays, and now reports say government is seeking to hold shares in the company since it already has some small shares in Airtel.
Government used to have 25 per cent shares in Airtel and it was held by Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC). But Bharti Airtel reportedly made some huge capital investment without any cash from government so they converted it into equity and that has depleted government’s shares to less than one per cent.
The stalemate is creating more anxiety among workers of both companies but they are unable to speak with one voice because both companies have rules that discourage labour unionization, so no one wants to stick their necks out openly for fear of victimization.
But a worker of Airtel told Adom News “as things stand now, we are seriously thinking about coming together to fight for our interest because the uncertainty about our fate is very unsettling.”
Meanwhile, the merger deal still remain unapproved.