Communication Workers Union (CWU) rejects the auctioning of Telkom’s properties. The media reports indicated that Telkom announced through its auctioning partner Golndustry, that they will hold an auction for 53 properties. These properties include commercial, industrial buildings, vacant land and agricultural land with the properties situated in various provinces.
According to the reports, the bidding will be open from the 13th to the 18th of March 2020. It is important to note that Go Industry property has been working with Telkom since 2013, and serves as bidding partners to the company. This auction comes at the time when the company is also in the process to retrench over 3000 workers. This confirms the union’s allegation that the current Telkom management and the board have ran out of ideas and are only thriving on creating artificial profits yet failed to build capacity and growth within the telecoms space. The Sipho Maseko tenure will go down in history books as a symbol of failure and destruction, where new players with less infrastructure capacity and broader geographical footprint emerged better and more efficiently than the former telecoms’ monopoly. We need a management team with vision that will drive innovation in the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
To add salt into the wounds of the nation, some of the properties that are to be discarded are currently used by the state entities such as South African Post Office. This, therefore; is an attack on the state and it is unpatriotic in nature. The selling of these properties will only benefit few individuals and have dire consequences to the SOC and the economy of the country in general. In the 2019 election manifesto of the ruling party (ANC), it expressly stated that it will investigate the introduction of “prescribed assets” on financial institutions funds to unlock resources for the investments in social and economic development.
We, therefore, conclude that the investigation on the “prescribed assets investment” and rebuilding the economy, as cited in the election manifesto, must be concluded first and restrain any SOE’s from selling such assets.
We implore all the progressive forces to join us in our call to stop Sipho Maseko and his team from looting the little that is left of Telkom and further cripple the telecommunications infrastructure which will the destroy the remaining jobs.
As CWU, we call for a public debate with Telkom on the SOE’s rationale on retrenchments.
The end
Issued by the Office of the General Secretary
Contact:
CWU General Secretary
Aubrey Tshabalala
Cell: 061 481 1080