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The Zambia Congress of Trade Unions ( ZCTU) has called for a management review and shake-up at a state-owned telecoms company, Zamtel. This demand is a sequel to the company’s failure to turn around its operations and improve its financial performance, despite telecom being a lucrative industry across the world.
The Zambia Congress of Trade Unions ( ZCTU) has called for a management review and shake-up at state-owned telecoms company, Zamtel. This demand is a sequel to the company’s failure to turn around its operations and improve its financial performance, despite telecom being a lucrative industry across the world. Importantly, global telecom companies have registered higher levels of profits during the pandemic days..
The union’s apex body said that there was more that needed to be done if Zamtel was to start making profits and have a stable workforce. The Zambia mobile phone operators market is limited with only two private players other than Zamtel, such as Airtel and MTN. While the private players are making huge profits, Zamtel is lagging behind. The trade union functionaries said that instead of just resorting to cutting jobs for staff members for rationalizing the operations, there was a need to review if the management of Zamtel itself was responsible for the low performance of the company. The company should identify reasons for incurring losses on a continuous basis.
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Zamtel, the trade unionists said was viable. But the problem seems to be the top-heavy management. About 90% of the revenue collected by the company goes towards administrative costs. There are some workers who have been sent on redundancy for the purpose of making Zamtel profitable, which the trade unionists blame as the result of a wrong diagnosis of the basic problem. The losses, according to trade union members, were due to the non-performance of managerial staff in some departments; but the blame was quietly put on the non-managerial staff.
