The country’s largest telecommunications service provider, MTC, has been in the news lately due to compulsory biometric registration that accompanies its required SIM registration process. This week, MTC’s chief human capital and corporate affairs officer, Tim Ekandjo, sat down with New Era to clarify the SIM registration procedure, and touched on numerous other topics as well. He explained that all SIM cards not properly registered by 1 January 2024 will be terminated by the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia (CRAN).
Q: Let me firstly thank you for availing yourself for this interview. MTC has been listed for almost over a year now. What has changed from prior the listing?
A: It has been the most humbling journey so far. We had to step up our governance frameworks, and become more transparent in all our dealings. For instance, we would never share our strategies publicly, but because we are now listed, all that information is now openly available in our prospectus for everybody to see. Our board of directors are now voted for by the AGM and not appointed by the minister anymore, as used to be the case. We now have to abide by the rules and regulations of the NSX, and of course we now have another responsibility, which is to manage the share price, even though it is not always entirely in our control. As opposed to just having one shareholder, which used to be government, we now have different shareholders. We thus have the responsibility to ensure that their expectations are met, as promised in our prospectus.
Q: What are the positive things brought about by the fact that you are now listed?
A: We have done a lot of good work in the area of Environmental Sustainability, and we have ever since launched our Sustainability Plan with clear action plans. Linked to that is the marvelous work we have done in the area of Corporate Social Investment with the various projects that lie thereunder, all promoting social upliftment in the areas of education, health, employment-creation, entrepreneurship and poverty alleviation. We have most recently appointed Deloitte & Touche to manage our hotline, where members of the public or our Ambassadors can report anything that they feel goes against our governance principles. As late as last year, our board approved a housing allowance scheme for all MTC Ambassadors from grades A to D3 because our vision is to see all our Ambassadors owning their homes.
Q: The requirement of biometrics as part of your sim registration process seems to be a thorny issue. Talk to me about that, and why do you insist on biometrics?
A: By now, we all know that effective 2nd January 2024, all sim cards not registered by 1st January 2024 will be terminated by the Regulator. As MTC, we therefore have a responsibility to ensure that all our customers’ sim cards are registered to avoid any inconvenience on their part. So far, we have already successfully registered 969,235 sim cards. The basic requirement to register a sim card is to obtain the customer’s full name, identity document and address. This is information we already have from all our postpaid customers, and even that has not prevented fraud and cybercrime to happen. Over the years, we have experienced a lot of fraudulent activities when it comes to sim swaps and identity fraud. Many customers have lost their hard-earned money, and MTC also suffered losses. We are, therefore, in a good position to know through experience that only requiring basic information like your identity, full name and address is not enough, and that is why we now require biometric data, which is your fingerprint and facial recognition so that we create a digital identity of the customer for their own protection. That is in any event where the world is moving to, with most African countries also introducing biometrics as a requirement for sim registration. Cybercrime has become a serious threat, and our neighbouring countries like South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria have lost up to U$500 million per annum on such crimes.
Q: While your rationale makes sense, customers are concerned about data privacy. Does MTC ensure such confidentiality?
A: Absolutely, yes. MTC has been in existence for 28 years now, and we have always tested all customer information with absolute confidentiality, and our record speaks for itself. There is, therefore, no need for anybody to doubt us now. Providing us with your identity documents, your home address and full name is also personal information, just like the information we require in terms of biometrics. It makes no sense to trust us with part of your personal information, and not some. This information is safely stored on our cloud, and our requirement for this information is in line with the draft Namibia Data Protection Bill, and it adheres to the EU General Data Protection Regulation and the AU Convention on cybercrime and data. It is also important to note that we already have so many companies taking customers’ biometric data, so this is nothing new, and most of our customers appreciate the fact that we have gone the extra mile to protect them from cybercrime.
Q: How is it like being at the helm of MTC and part of its Executive Team?
A: Our advantage is that we are a formidable and experienced team that is extremely dedicated to the success of our brand. The fact that we are a diverse bunch of individuals also ensures that we look at the same thing from different perspectives. Our Exco team, supported by our Board, works extremely hard because we have demanding jobs. But all in all, serving our customers every day is only a pleasure, and we would not want to have it any other way.
Q: Where would you rate MTC in the list of Namibia’s Best Employers to work for?
A: I do not like comparing ourselves to other corporates because that means you have limited yourself in terms of the excellence you can achieve by their standards. I think we have done very well in terms of enriching our employee value proposition with the various initiatives we implemented over the years. Our latest engagement survey indicated that we have over 83% engaged Ambassadors. Our key focus areas over the years were improving medical benefit,s and we have recently turned our focus to housing because we know it is a big social problem in Namibia. Other key focus areas continue to be the development and upskilling of our Ambassadors to prepare them for the 4th Industrial Revolution. We are not a perfect company, and neither do we want to be. But I know for sure that we are an admirable brand that most people who find innovation and an inspiring work environment appetizing would want to work for.
Q: Before we conclude, you have recently experienced a network outage, which left most Namibians without any connection. This is rather unusual from MTC. What happened, and importantly what has been done to ensure it does not happen again?
A: Let me firstly apologise to all our customers for the inconvenience that followed as a result of this outage. The incident was unfortunate and caused by a hardware failure that we highly regret. Our technical teams have since restored the network that only affected odd numbers in our number range. Our teams will be more vigilant, going forward, to ensure this does not happen again. I would like to thank all our customers for being patient and understanding with us while this happened. Going forward, we will ensure that it does not happen again.
Q: We have heard through the grapevine that MTC will soon launch Mobile Financial Services. Is there any truth in that?
A: We have promised our customers and shareholders that we will implement Mobile Financial Services (MFS) in our prospectus, and have every intention on delivering on that promise. MFS are simply products and services that a financial institution provides to its customers through mobile devices. Mobile companies have dominated this space, and MTC is in the best position to bring these services to our customers very soon.
Q: In conclusion and on a lighter note, are the MTC Rot social media allegations anything to worry about?
A: I think we are so used to “rots” that we do not recognise excellence when it’s right in front of us. Rotting means something that is in the process of decaying or deteriorating. MTC is by far Namibia’s shining example when it comes to governance and branding excellence. The fragrance you smell when you pass by MTC or just hear about our brand is totally the opposite of a rot. In fact, it is an admirable fragrance. The smear campaign by whoever wrote this about MTC is rather unfortunate, and we do not intend to fuel it by giving attention to it. We will remain focused. Anything related to our remuneration is audited internally and externally by qualified auditors. We have a very strong procurement governance process, and all tenders above N$5 million are approved by our board as part of the process. We have a diverse Exco team recruited on the basis of excellence, and these appointments are also approved by our board. Our Ambassadors have the right to be associated to unions, but importantly, they also have the right not to associate. At the moment, our internal Staff Engagement Committee has done very well to advance the interests of all our Ambassadors because their interests are aligned with the interest of the company, i.e. to take very good care of all our Ambassadors. In conclusion, I would like to assure you that MTC is under exceptionally good leadership led by Dr Erastus, who has done a great job since coming onboard and delivering magnificent results that all our shareholders are proud of.