Glo Ghana losing grip; closes shops, decommissions towers

Adom News checks have revealed that Glo Ghana has closed down some major Gloworld Shops in the country and is due to close down some more as workers get nervous over possible loss of jobs.

The company’s sales points at Dansoman in Accra and at Adum in Kumasi have not been opened to the public for sometime now. The company is reportedly gearing up to close shops in Madina, Lapaz and Mallam Junction all in Accra, and the Ho shop in the Volta Region.

An official of Glo admitted on grounds of anonymity the impending mass closure "is true".

Meanwhile, some technical staff of the company, who told Adom News they are looking for new jobs, alleged that Glo started decommissioning some towers in parts of the country ahead of the closure of shops.

The National Communications Authority's latest Quality of Service report shows that Glo has no coverage in five out of nine areas measured in the Eastern region.

Insiders allege that the Globacom Group headquarters in Nigeria is losing confidence in the Ghana operations because they are not meeting sales targets.

When the current Glo Ghana Head of Business, Hakeem Kazeem took over two years ago, he promised to take Glo Ghana to number two in terms of subscriber base. At the time Glo had over 1.62 million customers and commanded some 7% market share.

Salesman Kareem said he was going to use sales and marketing strategies as well as network improvement to achieve that ambitious target.

Two years on, and Glo under Kazeem, has rather lost customers and market share. Its current subscriber base is 1.45 million and its market share is down to 4.47%, which shows that it is clearly losing grip.

Earlier this year when the Globacom Group signed a roaming partnership deal with Vodafone, Glo Ghana was conspicuously excluded from the deal, and industry analysts interpret that to mean the group is losing confidence in the Ghana operations.

Some workers of the company have also revealed, since they started operations four years ago, there has been no salary adjustments in Ghana, in spite of the changing economic conditions.

As a result, several of the skilled and specialized staff Glo poached on its arrival, have left the company and joined other telcos, and more are allegedly on their way out.

Meanwhile, some Glo Ghana workers are said to have poured their frustration on the Ghana management but to no avail.

Glo Ghana started on April 30, 2012 on the back of a robust network, with at least 1.5 million pre-reserved lines on its network. In no time it scooped some six per cent market share, but has since been falling for no apparent reason.

At their launch, Glo promised everything like never before and introduced some of the juiciest offers the industry had ever seen.

The company also signed on loads of celebrities as its brand ambassadors and promised nationwide entertainment trips like never before, but that has never happened.

Within the first 18 months of its operations, Glo Ghana changed the Head of Business four times, and industry watchers believe that was a sign that the centre could not hold and that could be reason for the company's lingering challenges.

Officials of Glo have remained tight-lipped on the reasons for the closure of the shops and loss of coverage in some areas of the country. That is not a surprise because Glo officials are usually tight-lipped on any and everything regarding their own operations.

Story by Ghana | Samuel Dowuona | [email protected]