Merging assets to be competitive

Kumul Telikom Holdings chairman Andrew Johnson says the State entity is putting together its assets to make it competitive.
Johnson said the integration of entities like Telikom’s mobile service and bmobile-Vodafone would make it stronger than competing against each other.
Commenting on the merger of State-owned communication companies and job securities of the workers, he said: “What we are doing today, is when we talk about the merge, we’ve actually created a new company. I want it to be very clear that we are not taking Telikom PNG networks and putting it into bmobile or anything like that.
“We are creating an entity under Kumul Telikom Holdings, have two retail businesses, a fixed business and a mobile business.
“Fixed business – media business like EMTV and FM 100; and, wholesale business – DataCo PNG.
“And we will combine our assets, and combine our people.
“What we are really doing is we are restoring the business to what it should have been years ago.
“Everybody’s rights are formally covered in agreements. We are not going to touch anybody rights, we will absolutely respect everybody’s rights.
“There’s no question about that.
“There has been some downsizing as the business hasn’t performed. And frankly, it is hasn’t been performing for a lot of years. The way that the management has responded, the simple way is get rid of people.
“The right way is basically to build a better business. And we are in the business of building a better business rather than the cost cutting business because cost-cutting is not a long term strategy.
“If we are going to build what we are out to do, which is the number one telecommunications company in PNG, we are not going to do it by getting rid of talented people. In fact, I am on keen on bring back some of the talent people who have left.
“Now, the next one is that, there is an expectation that we are a State-owned enterprise that everybody’s job is guaranteed for life.
“Thirty years ago, State-owned enterprises had a monopoly position and they had a right to exist and basically, there was enough money to pay everybody and put up the prices to break even every year.
“The fact is that we are in a competitive environment, we can’t do that.
“So, we’ve got, unless the Government is prepared to continue to subsidies the SOE or allow them to drive up their price, and you allow them to do that with PNG Power or water, you can’t do that in telecommunications.”