Undeniably the first thing the new ICT Minister, Hon Kazembe Kazembe irrevocably had to do was to simply bring a hard broom to sanitize the sector and start at NetOne with firing the whole incompetent NetOne board (he already did), which has prioritized politicking at the expense of the state-owned mobile entity.
My last opinion over the Muchenje vs NetOne was a simple advise urging the board to do the honorable thing and find each other while they settle their differences in an amicable way, alas they chose to stick to their guns and allowed personal interests over corporate governance.
It is now a public secret that they fabricated allegations to taint the image of the only profit-making CEO, since NetOne inception, and completely grew blind to the good figures he was recording only to politick at the expense of the mobile network.
Investigations done proved that the NetOne board lied to the then minister that there were not aware of the intent to fire the 9 executives, when in actual fact all executives had been given prior notices that their contracts were not going to be renewed as they expired, except for Brian Mutandiro.
Letters were written to executives 3 months before their contracts expired, clearly notifying them that there were not the most competent executives for the posts they held, while HR also reminded the same executives towards the end of the contracts.
However NetOne played ignorant, reversed the firing of executives, pulled a political card that Muchenje only waited for the upcoming elections, to immediately dismiss the employees, as cabinet was also being dissolved, in contrary with the actual occurrence of the events.
Another lie they peddled was professing ignorance on the firing of the executive, while our investigation pointed out that some board members (names withheld) actually gave a green light, when there were notified of the developments.
However all hell broke lose when they distanced themselves from the move, with the minister still kept in dark of the ongoing, only to play safe and scapegoating the CEO after the decision was implemented.
Negotiations between the NetOne CEO and board yielded no fruitful outcome and the next move for the incoming Minister was simply to dissolve the whole board and start from scratch.
The board has been clueless on how best to drive the mobile network forward, running it as perennial loss making entity, and the only time NetOne records profit, they dismally fail to show the corporate interests above their personal matters.
Infact, if at all they had a conscience, they should have done the honorable thing and immediately resign before the new minister had wielded his axe on them.
Let’s give Muchenje a chance to prove his salt and wish NetOne luck. The demoralized employees are waiting for the SOS message to hit home.
The current NetOne board had to be shown the exit door, as they had dismally failed to solve NetOne problems.
