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Business Reporter
STATE-OWNED telecommunications firm NetOne’s board chair Mr Alex Marufu has stepped down.

In a statement, NetOne said Mr Marufu was now based outside the country and would be replaced by Mr Peter Chingoka on an acting capacity.

“NetOne wishes to announce that its chairman of the board Mr Alex Marufu has stepped down with immediate effect. Mr Marufu has been board chairman for the past two and a half years,” said NetOne.

“In the last several months he has been operating from South Africa where he is employed by EOH Holdings. He has been travelling up and down to meet his board commitments at NetOne.”

In his time as board chair, Mr Marufu blew the whistle on former chief executive officer Mr Reward Kangai and other top management who owed NetOne $11 million through their company Firstel Cellular.

NetOne and Firstel Cellular entered a service provider agreement in which Firstel was mandated to find clients for NetOne contract lines and then remit the money collected from the subscribers to the service provider, less its commission.

However, the company did not remit the proceeds resulting in NetOne approaching the courts. The High Court and Supreme Court ruled that Firstel pays the mobile operator the debt of about $8,3 million in January last year. But the debt has since ballooned to about $11 million.

Top managers were sent on forced leave in March this year. These include Mr Kangai, Mrs Memory Mandiya Ndoro (executive public relations and special projects), Mr Prosper Muvengwa (executive retail and sales), Mr Lindon Nkomo (legal executive) and Mr Rafael Mushanawani (chief information officer).

Meanwhile, the restructuring of the giant parastatal has started paying dividends.

A recent report by Potraz shows that NetOne’s subscriber base increased in the third quarter of 2016 to 36,4 percent while rival Econet subscriber market share slumped to 49,4 percent. Telecel now holds 14,2 percent of the subscriber market share.

When the restructuring of NetOne commenced last year, the Potraz report showed that it had 2,7 million active subscribers.

A year later the figure had jumped to more than 4,5 million active subscribers, recording an increase of 1,8 million subscribers in one year.

Telecoms experts who spoke to our sister paper The Herald said the strong performance has been catalysed by the sacking of under-performing and corrupt management, adding that NetOne had become a force to reckon with in the telecoms sector.

The experts further attributed the solid performance of NetOne to the revamped leadership where a new team has adopted aggressive marketing, innovation, cost containment and consumer satisfaction.