By Mohamed Alaa El-Din
Minister of Communications Khaled Negm said his ministry’s intervention to resolve Telecom Egypt’s (TE) recent crisis is not against the law.
He added, in a statement to the Daily News Egypt, that the government owns 80% of the company’s shares, which allows it to intervene in order to redirect the company’s path.
He said that TE is the only company that owns infrastructure in Egypt, so it should stop its monopolising policies, in order for the communications and information technology sector to benefit from the infrastructure.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb recently issued a decree to replace the government’s representatives in the company’s Board of Directors, including CEO Mohamed El-Nawawy, and Chairman Omar El-Sheikh, with Osama Yassin and the former communications minister Mohamed Salem, respectively.
Former director of strategic planning at TE Mohsen Farid said that over the past five years the company’s former administration lacked the ability to make decisions. “The company’s operations are disrupted since former executive officials were in charge of its administration,” he said, expressing concern over the executive officials’ performance over the last five years.
Farid believes that the Ministry of Communications has the right to interfere in some of the executive administration’s organisational affairs, as the government owns 80% of the company’s shares. As such, the government, represented by the Ministry of Communications, has the right to interfere in deciding the company’s policies, as they are the senior shareholders.
He concluded that the company has been using monopolistic dealings for years, as it owns the communication sector’s infrastructure in Egypt. He further noted that this has been the case since mobile services were introduced in the Egyptian market.
At the time, the parliament fixed the prices between the companies and TE without conducting any technical studies. Therefore, the ministry’s intervention to restore discipline in the market is normal, Farid said.
