Yesterday, Central Organisation of Trade Union (COTU) boss Francis Atwoli through a terse statement described the one-year-old in office Peter Ndegwa as a ‘insensitive and inhuman’ for initiating a restructure of the firm that will see the majority of the 6000 employees re-apply for their jobs.
Mr Atwoli who has led COTU for longer has been silent about the suffering of workers working in the Industrial Area in Nairobi, under insensitive and inhumane conditions.
Nonetheless, this doesn’t get Safaricom Plc off the hook.
Safaricom is a bad company that has misused its dominant market position to; bully other telcos, engage in theft of intellectual property rights, share private customer data with third parties.
Some of the above cases have landed the telco in court.
This lends the question, is Peter Ndegwa that bad as to get a letter from COTU or there’s something more than meets the eye?
For starters, Safaricom is a semi-govt entity, meaning the govt of Kenya has some shares in it, a lot of it.
Peter Ndegwa took the reigns of power last year on April Fools Day and immediately there were cases of infringement of Intellectual Property, first, the extra security feature that seeks to stop a client’s ID card from being registered on MPESA by fraudsters was launched.
This was an idea a young techie Anyona Obutu has shared with the Telco a few months earlier; Safaricom launched it as theirs without involving the inventor.
Secondly, on January 26th 2021, Safaricom launched MPESA Bill Manager for Businesses, a service offering that copied Kibo Capital Group Limited registered Utility Model known as Universally Verifiable electronic receipt for payer and payee, thereby infringing on Kibo’s copyright.
In the two circumstances, Ndegwa was lied to and set up to fail.
As a novice in the Kenyan corporate cartel that had gotten worse since he went to lead Guinness Nigeria and Europe, the trap was laid for his downfall.
Then at his moment of weakness, WPP Scan Group had its own scandal. Safaricom had over the year depended on the PR firm to help its image.
For a long time, the Telco had enjoyed a near darlingship with Kenyans online was suffering the lack of online bot to sustain its image.
In the tussle to defend itself in the expose’ on intellectual property theft, Safaricom used ‘catfishes’, an online army of fake accounts with images of ladies on their profiles. It was a new low since Ndegwa took office.
READ
- #IntellectualPropertyTheftKE: The government registered & knows about Kibo Capital’s stolen Utility Model
- Evidence: M-PESA Bill Manager is a stolen Utility Model registered under Kibo Capital Group Limited
- Don’t sign up to M-PESA Bill manager for businesses: The case against Safaricom’s stealing ways
- IP Watch Article: Intellectual Property Theft By Corporations in Kenya
- Abuse Of Dominance By Notorious Telco Safaricom Through Zindua Cafe
- Safaricom stole our idea to roll out M-Shwari, Faulu Kenya says
- Man Seeks Equity Bank Support To Sue Safaricom for “Stealing” Mpesa 1 Tap Idea
- Banks sucked into Sh1bn PesaLink patent row
- Pesalink Scandal: Highly Overrated Slayqueen Agnes Gathaiya Steals Another Idea
- Safaricom accused of stealing a patented idea
- PesaLink Runs Into Another Copyright Infringement
- Safaricom Accused Of Stealing Reverse Call Feature Idea Pitched To Them In 2010
- How Safaricom Stole ‘Thibitisha’ Idea From Innovator Through Zindua Cafe Programme
- Man sues Equity Bank over Sh10 million song
It was a new low.
In the Safaricom Home Fibre scandal, where Kenyans complained about being shortchanged, the sponsored content on blogs was lies for everyone to see.
Is Peter Ndegwa in charge or he is being lied to into some management decisions that are detrimental to the firm by those who have been at the helm for more than 20 years?
He’s been described by some who have been at the firm longer as an outsider.
Ultimately, it is his shot to call.
The best thing for him to do, seeing that every service has deteriorated at Safaricom, is to set things straight.
- Pay owners of Intellectual Property, stop defending the indefensible in courts or tribunals. (If you don’t, let me assure you it is being investigated and a dossier will drop on how the cases went on in court)
- Check the list of third party SMS vendors and retender the whole thing
- Apologise to Kenyan on behalf of Bob Collymore in the case of the CHEZA Games Heist
- Call of the contract between Safaricom and Kenya Ferry services on the exclusive use of MPESA to pay for the fare as it is not economical and time conscious.
More to come
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Court suspends Safaricom’s MPESA Bill manager for businesses
Atwoli’s COTU letters attached
