By Atia Tilarious Azohnwi
Judith Yah Sunday epse Achidi, General Manager of Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL) imprints her mark in gold after her first 100 days at the helm of the state-owned company.
Since gaining the confidence of the Head of State on December 14, 2018, hers has been a mission to steady the ship of a company whose economic strength was fading out.
CAMTEL’s pioneer female General Manager has since her installation dedicated her all to the growth of the two-decade old company. Her first outing was a visit to the company’s pivotal services in Yaoundé, Kribi and Douala where she had firsthand the situation on the ground.
Characteristic of her shrewd financial management, she has rationalized spending and is fighting tirelessly to ensure that the company’s cost of production is brought down to its barest minimum. Over-billing has now been banished in a bid to keep CAMTEL afloat.
General Manager Judith Yah Sunday epse Achidi is bent on optimizing cash-flow in the company. Faced with the acute lack of products (phones, mobile internet modems, fibre optic and copper cables for land lines), Mrs Achidi has opted to personally oversee the supply of the above by CAMTEL’s partners. She is poised to seeing to it that the gadgets and equipment are not only supplied but that their quality is unrivalled.
The SUN learnt that 1000 KM of fibre optic is currently being cleared at the Douala port as part of a vast transformational project to render better service to subscribers and potential customers as it will ease the installation of fixed internet and FTTX lines.
Because she puts the customer first, they will no longer need to pay for services and wait for ages before being installed. “Mo more stories. The moment you pay, you are served. Customers are king,” a CAMTEL staff told The SUN.
100 days on, CAMTEL’s General Manager has mastered the company’s human resources, instilling in them the virtues of punctuality, discipline and call to service. A strong system that sanctions latecomers is in place and staff are now evaluated based on their output and performance.
Walking the talk
General Manager Judith Yah Sunday epse Achidi has decided to let her actions do the talking for her. CAMTEL’s internal debt woes are being thoroughly addressed, while pensioners can now smile home. Retired workers had since 2015 not received their dues, an issue that has been handled as top priority. The astute administrator has cleared all outstanding dues owed retired staff from 2015 to 2017 and a plan to pay the rest from 2018 till date has been rolled out.
A program is underway to render the company processes less cumbersome in the great interest of the customers. She is equally gearing towards rendering the work environment conducive and also determined to ameliorating quality of service and customer satisfaction. Her greatest objective is to reposition CAMTEL as a key actor in the development of digital economy as envisioned by the Head of State, His Excellency President Paul Biya.
The workaholic in Judith Yah Sunday Achidi can be perceived in her remarkable capacity for sticking to the task. This whirlwind of activities to a large extent is just a pointer to her style. To be convincing, she must maintain the momentum and dissipate the skeptics in some quarters who argue that these are theatrical selective acts devoid of substance.
Despite all of these, the Board of Directors seems to be a stumbling block to the General Manager. It is alleged that in her drive to reduce salary bulk, the Board refused to endorse the new organizational chart which she proposed. The new chart was to reduce the number of directors and sub directors from 135 to 62. On the basis of an internal audit which Madam Achidi did of the company, we learnt that many subdirectors had juicy packages but with nothing to show for in terms of production for the company. It is even said that some of the sub directors barely know what their responsibility is. Reports say the Board’s vehement opposition to the new chart is linked to the fact that the members enjoy the cacophony which is reigning.
However, Madam still succeeded in putting a team in place for work to continue while hoping the Board sees reason with her. The tons of errors on the Board resolution of March 11, 2019 appointing Directors and Sub-Directors tells at what extent there is no perfect crime.
For instance: a resolution is supposed to have articles but this one doesn’t; a resolution supposed to be dated and the location where it held mentioned; the law on state corporations was wrongly quoted. Instead of 12 July 2017, the resolution talks of 18 July 2017 and this makes it totally out of place; the resolution does not make allusion to the company’s organizational chart, so on what basis did the board appoint?; the GM is supposed to make proposals for appointments based on her service needs and not the opposite like it reads on the resolution.
It would, of course, be naïve to imagine that the ill would just evaporate. Still, there should be palpable evidence that the fight is on.