Last week, you read about the Altech’s move to solve problems at KDN. The top management at Altech led by Tim Ellis who oversees the East African arm decided that the management will not renew the contracts of the expatriates who are bringing a negative perception of KDN with their presence.
Immediately after that blog post, Shahab Meshki wrote a strongly worded letter to all the employees asking them to ignore the reports as no expat will go home as reported by the media. Shahab wrote;
“Just to put records straight: Altech has no plans whatsoever to replace myself or any other senior staff of KDN. Like in any other company in Kenya or elsewhere such as Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom Kenya, Wananchi or Internet Solution just to name a few from our industry, expat contracts are limited by nature and are subject to review, extension or termination at the time of renewal.”
Shahab was a subject of the media reports and as a non performing manager who has not delivered much to the company since his entry, he should know better. When he refutes that he will be replaced, you wonder whether he employed himself or he also has bosses. Tim Ellis is his boss and categorically said that he will be replaced.
Read Shahab’s letter to KDN staff below.
From: Shahab Meshki [mailto:shahab.meshki@kdn.co.ke]
Sent: Friday, October 05, 2012 3:24 PM
To: staff@kdn.co.ke
Cc: Tim Ellis
Subject: Business Daily Article
Team,
As you may have seen in the article below, I am being “replaced” and Tim Ellis has been quoted saying that Altech will not renew Expat’s contract etc, something which is completely mistaken, misquoted and non factual. Tim and I was standing next to him, when he was talking to the writer made any such statements!
Just to put records straight: Altech has no plans whatsoever to replace myself or any other senior staff of KDN. Like in any other company in Kenya or elsewhere such as Safaricom, Airtel, Telkom Kenya, Wananchi or Internet Solution just to name a few from our industry, expat contracts are limited by nature and are subject to review, extension or termination at the time of renewal.
It is also unfortunate to note that the entire article is based on the personal interpretation of the writer and his way of creating breaking news without any foundation. The names mentioned in the article are taken out of context without verifying it with the source. We will take action on this and put records straight.
Just to give everyone a bit of background: this article printed today in Business Daily came after a conference call we had yesterday w/ a number of journalists in Norfolk Hotel, an event organised by our PR agency Corporate Talk.
The purpose of the event yesterday was to highlight the positive results KDN has achieved since the begin of the year in terms of network stability, customer retention and business stability in general, allow the press and media to pose openly questions to KDN and Altech management and lastly to shed some light on the last week Altech’s result announcement.
We also had some of staff attending the conference yesterday after coming over from a Standard Chartered Marathon Briefing Event, who participated in the discussion and answering directly questions around business, network stability and employee satisfaction.
Tim in particular highlighted the recent achievements of KDN and the positive outlook we see in terms of business and new partnerships, Altech’s and KDN’s desire to promote local staff to management and leadership positions as it fits the requirements going forward, something I have been passionate about in particular from day one.
We also promoted recently two of your colleagues to senior management positions such as Patrick Mbogo into Head of O&M and Dan Kwach to Manager of Data Center, key positions, which I believe are critical to the success of KDN as a Telco company.
At the same time, the training we started three months ago w/ Aaron Jones will identify high potential staff ready for higher positions as those roles become available.
My request to each and everyone is now not to allow this kind of articles to distract you from what we have to do on a daily basis to assist the business going forward and assist to turn around the fortunes of the company.
If you have any questions and/or comments, please don’t hesitate to call upon me or send me an email.
Best regards
Shahab
http://www.businessdailyafrica.com/Corporate+News/KDN+to+replace+chief+executive+in+turnaround+plan/-/539550/1525110/-/lr784h/-/index.html
Shahab Meshki
Managing Director Kenya Data Network
Mobile: +254 738 241 xxx
Email: shahab.meshki@kdn.co.ke
Now we are also getting reports that some of KDN local staff have not been paid for the last 5 months even as the few foreigners get all they need including accommodation and entertainment for themselves and friends whom they came with.
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