Africa-Press – Uganda. Two agents recruited to work with MTN Uganda as Direct Merchant Acquirers (DMAs) based in Lira City have accused their supervisors of conniving with other senior staff in Kampala to divert their commissions.
Oscar Okabo and Geoffrey Awong told Monitor on June 20 that when MTN Uganda recruited them in March, they were promised that the job of registering customers on MoMo Pay would fetch them good money, and the proceeds would eventually change their lives forever.
The aggrieved persons say according to a verbal agreement reached between them and MTN Uganda, creating a code would fetch each DMA Shs5, 000, while transacting the code would earn them Shs10, 000.
This would mean each of the 52 DMAs recruited around March 2023 would earn Shs15, 000 by registering one merchant or MoMo Pay customer.
Okabo, Awong and 50 others took up the job and commenced work immediately.
However, the two allege that those close to the supervisors were selected and paid their commission for March, leaving out 18 agents.
Okabo said some of their colleagues are suffering in silence because their supervisors threatened to sack them if they complain.
Mr Constantine Munu, Lira City senior labour officer, has now written to MTN Uganda’s regional sales manager, Mr Ferdinand Ochieng to ensure the claims are settled before June 22, 2023.
When contacted, Mr Ochieng acknowledged that some of their workers who survive on commission had not been paid but there is a streamlined system for payments.
“Those are not direct employees of MTN. They are paid commission, and there are always terms and conditions put there. The commission comes from the system – from head office (Kampala) not from Lira because Lira is not the ‘heart’ of MTN,” he explained.
Ochieng added that; “And on top of that they are not the only people who are working under commission in Uganda. We brought them to work. Trust me if they are putting it that way we shall have to go to court. It has gone out of my hand. It has gone to MTN’s hand, not any of us.”
According to Mr Ochieng, whenever agents join MTN, they oriented into their areas of work and how MTN is supposed to pay their commission.
“MTN is not an NGO. MTN is a business where it looks at profit. These people came and asked for jobs, we gave them jobs but there were criteria that they were supposed to follow for them to earn some money through the system. These people didn’t follow the criteria,” he said.
Drama
In the absence of appointment letters, the aggrieved persons are now holding on to the Smartphone (tool of trade) MTN Uganda recently distributed to them, as evidence that they were working for the telecom company.
“This problem cannot be solved by you running away with the phone. That phone is first of all a tool of trade … .and have their serial numbers. I can change them into a dumpy and it will become more useless,” the regional sales manager said.
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