VODAFONE SETS UP FOUNDATION (PAGE 31)

VODAFONE Ghana has established a foundation, Vodafone Ghana Foundation, with an initial investment of £200,000 with the aim of sharing the benefits of its operations in the country as widely as possible.
The foundation also aims at protecting the natural environment and supporting local communities in which the company’s customers, employees, investors and suppliers live.
The company is yet to advertise for the public to make proposals for assistance from the foundation.
The Chief Executive Officer of Vodafone Ghana, Mr David Venn, announced this when he paid a courtesy call on the Paramount Chief of the Essikado Traditional Area, Nana Kobina Nketsia V, at Essikado in the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolis over the weekend.
The company donated GH¢3,000 to the Nana Nketsia IV Educational Trust Fund to help alleviate poverty, improve the social and economic circumstances and the development of education in the traditional area.
Mr Venn said Vodafone took immense pride in its contribution to the development of local communities.
“Under our access to communication programme, we have started deploying community SIM phone booths in the rural and peri-urban communities across Ghana,” he said.
This, he explained, was to ensure that as many Ghanaians as possible had access to telecommunications and the enhancement of life the facility provided.
“We have also installed several of these phones in several second cycle schools to facilitate easy communications between students and their parents and guardians, “ he added.
Mr Venn said Vodafone Ghana was currently in transition in order to re-position itself to deliver enhanced value added services to all its stakeholders in a very competitive market.
“In the past few weeks, we have undertaken a number of investments both in infrastructure and people, in order to infuse greater efficiency into our operations and offer our customers the global excellence that Vodafone is famous for,” he explained.
The chief executive officer said the Western region was regarded by the company as one of the most important areas for future business development.
“The region is renowned for its natural resources, which have attracted a lot of world renowned mining companies and which require first class international communications to operate efficiently, ” he noted.
Mr Venn further said with the recent oil discovery, the Western region had become the new economic destination in Ghana and that Vodafone Ghana was working hard to ensure that the company delivered the global excellence that it was famous for to the people of the Western region.
“We intend to expand our operations in the region to ensure that the people of the Western region enjoy excellent, unparalleled and uninterrupted telecommunications services,” he added.
Nana Kobina Nketsia V said there had been a lot of noise about the sale of Ghana Telecom, which showed how dear the company was to the heart of Ghanaians.
Also, he said, capital flight was a worry to the people of the country, since capital retention would ensure re-investment and improvement of the country’s economy.
Nana Nketsia said the company’s donation to the educational trust fund was very commendable and that the traditional council would make judicious use of it to improve education standards in the area.