MTN CEO resigns while strike continues

Ahmad Farroukh, MTN South Africa CEO, announced his resignation from the mobile network provider on Monday. His resignation will take effect from 31 July.
 
The reason for Farroukh’s resignation has not been revealed. Sifiso Dabengwa, president and CEO of MTN Group, noted: “This was a difficult decision to take for Ahmad, but unavoidable due to personal and family reasons.”
 
Dabengwa added: “On behalf of the MTN leadership, we thank Ahmad for his contribution and wish him success with his future endeavours.”
 
MTN has not yet named a successor.
 
Problems facing MTN
 
In recent weeks MTN South Africa has had to face the challenges caused by the ongoing strike of some of its staff. The striking workers are demanding a wage increase, as well as a guaranteed bonus and have also issued variety of other requests.
 
According to Bloomberg, MTN has also experienced a drop in sales, reportedly due to competition and price cuts imposed by the regulator (ICASA - Independent Communications Authority of South Africa).
 
However, other reports indicate that MTN’s service delivery has been affected as a result of the ongoing strikes, as have its product channels.
 
Rival Cell C’s contract buy out initiative is also set to hurt MTN. The contract buy out enables clients of other network providers who are unhappy with the service they are getting to switch to Cell C. Cell C said it will pay customers that switch up to R10,000 to get out of their current contracts.
 
MTN had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication.
 
For more information on the MTN strike, click here.