As part of its commitment to support Government’s efforts in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic the MTN Ghana Foundation is donating five million Ghana Cedis (GHS 5million) towards the procurement of medical supplies including personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essentials to support frontline medical staff.
Commenting on the Foundation’s support, the CEO of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh, said, “COVID-19 is, unquestionably, testing our society’s fortitude and we all have a role to play in helping our country to overcome this global challenge. From the onset, we made a commitment to provide the needed assistance to help the country, businesses and the entire society stay connected to their work and loved ones. Our support to date has been in that direction.
This phase of our commitment is to help us directly combat the disease and to help the medical teams provide the needed care to our fellow Ghanaians.
We believe that we are good together as a people especially in these times when we all must pitch in to fight this pandemic. We are confident that together we will overcome this challenge”.
MTN Ghana Foundation in consultation with the Ministry of Health is procuring the items such as; Virus Sampling kits, Masks, Gloves, PPEs (Overalls), PCR Machines for testing, RNA, Extraction Kits, Infrared thermometers and Disposable bedsheets.
Mr Adadevoh said, “we are in difficult times and MTN continues to review its support to the country. We continue to monitor the global situation closely and we continue to urge our employees and customers to strictly adhere to the recommendations of the World Health Organization, Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service”.
Following official confirmation of COVID-19 cases in Ghana, MTN took a series of precautionary measures to ensure continuity of services and the safety of its stakeholders including employees, customers, communities, and suppliers against potential infections. Other measures that the company has taken include:
Protective measures for Employees and Customers – Key among the measures include the positioning of alcohol-based sanitizers at vantage points across branches and experience centers for use by customers and employees; the deployment and use of temperature guns, personal protective equipment and practicing of social distancing.
Network resilience for Business continuity – MTN Ghana has also put in place measures to ensure that the MTN network remains resilient and supports round-the-clock connectivity as Government Agencies, Businesses and individuals resort to social distancing measures such as working from home.
The company has offered extra capacity for functions such as videoconferencing and better connectivity for healthcare workers.
Free Internet connectivity to education sites – MTN has also zero-rated over 70 educational online sites (public and private) to sustain research and learning during the period.
This supports a total of over 114,000 customers, consuming over 2,674 GB per day for educational purposes. MTN Ghana has also provided Ghs10,000 worth of free data to all University students on its MTN Bright Scholarship scheme.
Providing connectivity for Government portals – To support the facilitation of remote working by government agencies, MTN is collaborating with the National Information Technology Authority (NITA) to zero-rate Government of Ghana Smart Workplace Portal to enable Government workers to work from home.
In addition, MTN Ghana has already zero-rated several informational Government websites that are providing health and other related COVID-19 information such as the Ghana Health Service website and others.
Protecting the customer through the provision of critical health information – MTN has also provisioned shortcode 311 information center to facilitate information flow on COVID-19/ and 0555311311 for the Ministry of Information to be used for social media services.
MTN Ghana is also assisting with the circulation of safety tips received from the Ghana Health Service and promotion of the 112 national emergency line.
Free MoMo transfers and revision of MoMo wallet limits – Financial services remains critical in this period and is central to the fight against COVID-19.
To this end, MTN MoMo has removed charges for transactions of GHS100 and below per day, simplified registration for merchant and Person-to-person wallets and purchases from e-commerce and other platforms.
There has also been an increase in daily transaction limits and balances for the various wallet types to promote customer safety through non-cash transactions.
Mobile money merchant accounts have been deployed as collection conduits to support Government institutions like the Ministry of Finance and the First Lady’s fund mobilization for COVID -19.
Support with Contact tracing – MTN Ghana has also brought to bear its leadership in the technology space by supporting the infection monitoring and contact tracing team based on the requisite legal procedures.
To support this further, MTN Ghana has initiated the provision of 800 SIM Cards with 10GB data on each card to National Security and 10 Turbonet devices with 225GB data to COVID-19 RESPONSE Team for use by contact tracers.
MTN Ghana would like to assure the public that it will continue to update its measures as the situation evolves to ensure business continuity, customer safety as well as staff well-being.
By Ike Dzokpo
