Industry News

The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) has donated some medical supplies to the National Ambulance Service (NAS) part of the mobile industry’s effort to support the national fight against the coronavirus disease.
The medical items including Five thousand (5,000) pieces of nitrile hand gloves and One thousand five hundred (1,500) pieces of nose masks were presented to the NAS.

Accra, 20 March 2020: The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications (GCT) has expressed willingness of its members to support the Government of Ghana and other key stakeholders in the nation’s quest to combat the outbreak of the novel corona virus (COVID-19)

The COVID-19 global pandemic, which has been recorded in Ghana, continues to spread and disrupt everyday life.
It is imperative that Ghanaians stay connected, and as an industry, we reiterate our readiness to support government, businesses and our customers in leveraging on the power of telecommunications for the greater good of our society.

To this end, we have proactively engineered and enabled a number of activities aimed at complementing Ghana’s efforts to fight the corona virus.
• Institutional partnerships with the Ministries of Communications, National Communications Authority, Ghana Health Service, Bureau of National Communications, National Security to broadcast emergency communications using our network infrastructure to educate the general public
• Working with the above-mentioned institutions to route all calls to the Covid-19 emergency numbers at no cost to the public.
• Collaborating with the Bank of Ghana to implement free mobile financial services transactions within certain bands to promote digital forms of payments and augment social distancing which will reduce the rate of new infection.
• We continue to give a lot of education to our staff at all of our offices and branches. We have provided hand washing facilities, sanitizers and protective gear for our staff among other initiatives in a bit to curtail any spread of new infections.
• We have put in place plans for our staff to work from home to guarantee service availability at all times to facilitate seamless service provision to everyone
• Zero-rating critical websites that provide Covid-19 awareness and safety protocols.
• Offering further packages for identified educational, and related websites as well as other critical Government of Ghana portals that offer essential services to citizens
• The industry fraud team is equally working assiduously to fight coronavirus-related fraud and misinformation on our networks.

“As an industry we wish to assure the general public that one of our primary priorities is to ensure the provision of service availability and the resilience of our networks and services as we begin to experience increasing demand for voice, data and mobile financial services.” said Ing. Dr. Kenneth Ashigbey, CEO of GCT.

Kenneth added, “We are working closely with our Regulators and sector Ministry to ensure the adequate controls are in place to guarantee service availability, which can support customer experience for the larger population during these times.”

Finally, the Chamber entreats the general public to refer to the Ghana Health Service website for relevant information and updates, maintain social distancing, practice respiratory hygiene and wash hands regularly.

Media Contacts:
For the Chamber�
Derek Laryea
derek@telecomschamber.org
+233302730500

Yasmin Buari, a third-year student at the University of Ghana Medical School, has praised Vodafone for giving her financial and technical support throughout her senior high school (SHS) education.

Yasmin is one of the beneficiaries of a three-year scholarship programme, which was introduced by the Vodafone Ghana Foundation to help increase the pool of females in the science, technology and engineering industry.

The scheme sponsored the education of 300 brilliant female students in over 80 senior high schools across the country between 2014 and 2019.

Sharing her experience, Yasmin said “Vodafone’s scholarship programme helped my parents and I a lot when I was in the senior high school. I attended various science camps and mentoring programmes where we were given hands-on training in coding and robotics, as part of the scholarship. We were told to uphold higher academic standards, which also helped in my admission into medical school. I would like to thank Vodafone and British Council for that wonderful initiative.”

Commenting on the initiative, Gayheart Mensah, Director of External Affairs at Vodafone said “We are excited that our scholarship programme provided the foundation that has empowered 300 females who are pursuing careers in the medical, engineering and other related disciplines. We believe that females can play a significant role in addressing the technology and engineering challenges in the country, and this is one of the initiatives we introduced to help decrease the high attrition rate of women in this area.”

Vodafone’s scholarship programme was introduced in 2014, in partnership with the British Council, to help bridge the gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) by increasing females’ involvement in these subjects in Ghana.

The package, catered for the tuition fees, learning materials and educational expenses of the beneficiaries for their three-year secondary education.

Source: businessghana.com