He said among other things that “the new management is now putting in place a robust system of accountability and establishing reporting lines in the management cadre.” He went on to say that “our responsibility now is to clear the mess that was left behind by the previous management team,” adding that they have recruited special auditors “to help us do proper audit of what we inherited.”
Also speaking was SALCAB Managing Director Ishmael Kebbay Jr. He said “since my administration took over the management of Sierra Leone Cable Limited, we have re-engineered the business models of the submarine and the terrestrial infrastructure which churned out a 48% reduction in the cost of bandwidth for IP transit and IP lease circuits respectively.”
He went on to say that “at the moment, Sierra Leone has over 1,000km of fibre optic cables running from Freetown to Gendema, from Masiaka to Balamuya, and from Makeni to Kono.” He added that SALCAB is “officially launching our new national fibre bundles – these offerings will allow our clients to ride on the fibre cable to connect their backhaul base stations and enhance transmission and distribution of data.”
He further said: “My administration has also implemented steps to strengthen the business environment that we inherited and mitigate probable operational risks – I commissioned a baseline review and forensic audit of the entire business operations and network infrastructure immediately when I commenced operation of my appointment, the outcome of the audit will be shared with the relevant authorities.”
He also said: “We continue to strengthen our business environment by rolling out critical financial controls policies and framework, human resource policies and strategic plan to attract rich industry talents and position a healthy staff retention rate. I believe in the value of talent to drive the holistic aspirations and my administration is aiming towards making SALCAB one of the best places to work.”
He added that his dream of providing service is not limited to Sierra Leone only as SALCAB has aspirations to offer services to the sub-region by attracting CAPEX investment “that will allow us to deploy a second submarine cable that will serve as a redundancy to the ACE cable; this capability will enable us to offer regional redundancy service to Liberia, Guinea, and other markets through the ECOWEAN network.”
The climax of the press briefing was a question and answer session. Other speakers at the event were a representative from the Ministry of Information and Communication among others.
