Imagine a football team is winning all its matches and scoring goals, then the management asks it not to win again and to be lenient with its competitors. Of course, the request would be rejected and the team would appoint a new management.
This is exactly what the Communications Minister did when he changed Telecom Egypt's (a successful national company) board, while foreign companies continue to reap billions in profits from Egyptians' pockets, thanks to the many facilities extended to them.
I have here six questions for the Prime Minister, if he reads the papers, that is:
1 – Why did you sack a board that has achieved the highest revenues in the history of the company two months before the termination of its term? (Rumor has it there is a senior official at the Communications Ministry who owns a private company that provides consulting services for mobile companies).
2 – Was it because the company was said to have refused to reduce the Internet prices, whereas we all know that it had requested permission to reduce prices once in November and another time in April, and that the first request was denied and the second was pending?
3 – Was the company required to squander away public funds for the benefit of the mobile operators by reducing the rent and its infrastructure (US$15 billion over four years, with the private operators having the right to build their own infrastructure) so that the mobile operators can compete with Telecom Egypt when it reduces the prices?
4 – Is it not a monopoly that the three mobile phone companies agreed to a minimum price per minute before submitting it to the National Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, so as to share the profits away from the national company?
5 – Did you know that Egypt is the only country in the world whose national company does not have a mobile phone license (it was forced to waive its license twice by direct order under Mubarak, and the last Cabinet was trying to make it waive it for the third time).
6. Are you aware that if Telecom Egypt is not granted the fourth mobile phone license it will essentially die, the shareholders will go bankrupt and 50,000 employees will lose their jobs in just a few years?
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
