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Not right for esteemed shareholder to participate'

26/09/2011 00:00:00 SIBONGILE SUKATI

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LOBAMBA - SPTC Managing Director, Elijah Zwane has said it was not right for the esteemed shareholder at Swazi MTN to be seen participating in the Joint Venture Agreement between SPTC and Swazi MTN.

Zwane said this when making presentations before the parliamentary subcommittee tasked with looking into the breakdown of the relationship between the Minister of Information, Communications and Technology Nelisiwe Shongwe and the Swaziland Post and Telecommunications Board.

Zwane said the name of the highest authority of the land had been dragged through the mud in the whole issue as the 10 per cent shares that are held by the esteemed shareholder were reflected in his personal name in the MTN financials.

"It is not right for the estee- med shareholder to be seen to be participating in this venture and SPTC decided that it would be in the best interest of the country to withdraw these people at MTN as they are no longer protective of the esteemed shareholder as one would have expected," stated the report.

Zwane said the Court of Appeal had ruled that the relationship between SPTC and MTN was governed by the JVA.

He said SPTC felt that it was not respected by its representatives in the MTN Board as the repre-sentatives never consulted or reported back to either the ministry of ICT or the SPTC Board.

He said the representatives were Senator Winnie Magagula, Walter Bennett, Mfanasibili Ndlovu, Moses Zungu and Nokuthula Mthembu.

Zwane said following this, SPTC appointed new members to represent its interest in the MTN Board.

"The minister blessed this move but later turned around and verbally ordered that SPTC reinstates the withdrawn Board members," said Zwane.

‘PM’s instruction to cancel Seacom deal not good’

LOBAMBA - Swaziland Posts and Telecom-munications Corporation has said the verbal instruction by the prime minister to cancel the Seacom deal was not in its best interest.

SPTC, through its MD, Elijah Zwane said the Board of Directors had resolved not to heed the directive and may have to appeal to the highest authority of the land to explain their case. "The matter is between SPTC and MTN and if the Supreme Court judgment is anything to go by, government is an ‘intruder’ in the whole issue and in terms of the JVA," said Zwane.

He said giving MTN a 3G Licence is not good for SPTC because it allowed MTN access to data communication which was an exclusive right of SPTC.

SPTC directors agreed to withdraw appointment of five-member board

LOBAMBA — The SPTC Board of Directors have confirmed that they did indeed reach a resolution to withdraw the appointment of five members of the Swazi MTN board who were representing SPTC.

The SPTC Board emphasised that it was left with no alternative but to reach that conclusion after realising that the members were no longer serving the interest of SPTC.

The board said this conclusion was reached after developments of the events at the High Court where a ruling in favour of SPTC was overturned by the Court of Appeal.

They said these members were Walter Bennett, Winnie Nxumalo-Magagula, Moses Zungu, Nokuthula Mthembu and Mfanasibili Ndlovu. Some of the issues that damaged the relationship included:

a. SPTC Aoard had requested the representatives to address the issue of Swazi MTN cell phones not being able to call ONE numbers (77xxxxxx).
b. SPTC Board had requested that the representatives must report on a regular basis to the SPTC Board on progress at Swazi MTN. The representatives never did this, not even once.
c. SPTC Board was concerned with public remarks being made by some of the representatives about SPTC in public.
d. SPTC was concerned with the attitude that some of the representatives were not appointed by SPTC in the Swazi MTN Board and therefore did not consider themselves as answerable to the SPTC Board.