The Government of Uganda has reportedly forced MTN Uganda to hire local staff into top leadership positions amid the turbulent relationship marred with accusations of espionage.
Sources say after government deported senior staff of the telecom giant, it has now directed the telecom firm to recruit Ugandans into such positions.
It’s against this background that MTN Uganda today advertised positions of three deported senior staff.
The positions advertised in the media on Friday are; General Manager-Mobile Financial Services, General Manager-Sales and Distribution, and Chief Marketing Officer.
Italian National, Elsa Mussolini was General Manager-Mobile Financial Services, French national Olivier Prentout (in featured photo) was Chief Marketing Office and Annie Bilenge-Tabura, a Rwandan was General Manager-Sales and Distribution.
They were deported in February for acts that compromised national security. No further explanation was given by government on how they compromised national security.
However, the company has not advertised the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Wim Vanhelleputte who was also deported weeks later. MTN appointed Chief Technology Officer Gordian Kyomukama as acting CEO.
According to the adverts, MTN has further been forced to create a new managerial position dubbed Risk and Compliance in its new structural changes.
The duty of General Manager-Risk and Compliance will be to effectively manage all risk exposures of an internal or external nature and ensure existence of effective internal processes and policies in general and specifically in relation to compliance to laws and regulations across the MTN footprint.
Asked about the return of Vanhelleputte, Val Oketcho, the MTN Uganda Corporate Communications Manager refused to divulge details.
“You know, we have an acting CEO. As regards of former CEO coming back, we have no details to that,” he told URN.
