Ghana Telecom outdoors new Logo

Accra, June 24, GNA - Ghana Telecom (GT), the Nation's biggest Telecommunications network on Thursday outdoored a new logo to reflect the company's "vision of being a great, charismatic and dynamic leader in a technologically advancing country."

The new logo is made up of the company's initials written in lowercase to show flexibility blend beautifully with an adaptation of the three concentric circles of the Adinkra hene - a traditional Ghanaian symbol signifying leadership, dynamism and charisma at the background.

This is in sharp contrast to it's former logo of an "G" arching over Africa indicating GT's dream of making Ghana, Africa's leader in telecommunications.

The concentric circles signifies sound waves, which was unveiled in 1997 to inform the world that Ghana and Africa had risen to take her place in the information technology age.

Nana Akomeah, Minister for Information at a colourful ceremony pregnant with chorographic artistic display by 14 young males and females at the Accra International Conference Centre, unveiled the new logo, which also signifies the new change in the operations of GT. Nana Akomeah recalled GT's hiccups of poor customer relations, difficulties of getting fix lines, the interconnectivity problems, strange numbers appearing on items bills of customers.

He said: "I received my items bills with calls that I am purported to have made to Countries and that I have not link...the calls were also recorded between 0200 hours and 0300 hours."

Other problems the Minister pointed out include disconnection of customers without prior notice, faulty payphones and poor customer relationship.

Nana Akomeah however commended the new management for the tremendous transformation and injection of dynamism into the operations of the company over the past 18 months.

Mr Oystein Bjorge, Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Telecom said GT was being restructured to march up with international competitors and also provide quality and affordable services to the public.

Mr Bjorge said with the current technological advancement in telecommunication, GT needed a change in its operations to meet the challenges ahead.

The restructuring exercise would include the installation of new equipment, replacement of obsolete equipment, the introduction of new tariff system that would make telephone calls cheaper and affordable. Others were the retraining of staff, attitudinal changes among its staff and expansion of "One Touch" cell phone and fixed network as well as pay phones and recruitment of more staff.

Mr Bjorge explained that the new logo march up with its new slogan; "A new dawn for Ghana Telecom," and asked employees of GT to see the new logo as a change in every aspect of their operations.

The Chief Executive said, as part of the restructuring exercise, there would be no retrenchment of staff adding that all workers were going to be trained to meet the challenges.

He, therefore, urged the public to exercise restraints and co-operate with the Management to improve on its services. Mr Bjorge said GT had provided 8,000 jobs through the provision of payphones.

He said the number of payphones would be increased from the 4,998 in 2002 to 29,998 payphones by 2007.

He said GT had installed a new transmitter to ease trafficking to other networks adding "this explains why people using GT network to call other network had become very easy these days".

The Chief Executive said the Management had put in place a Fraud Management System to check fraud in its network, while it was also trying to get accreditation to award diplomas and degrees at its training school in Accra.

Mr David Gyewu, Deputy Minister of Communication, commended GT for it's new emerge especially the attitudinal change among its workers. The Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama, Nana Akomeah and Mr Gyewu were all presented with miniatures of the new logo. 24 June 04