Musical chair at BTCL

Nineteen managing directors have adorned the top position at the state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd in its life of 11 years.

Of the 19, seven ran the company as the MD more than once. Mahfuz Uddin Ahmed was the MD three times.

At the BTCL Eskaton Garden office, a plaque names 25 MDs, including the ones who had been the MD multiple times.

Industry insiders said frequent change in top management was not desired and that MDs of BTCL had mostly been busy following government orders and unable to get the time to take care of the company’s development and plan its future.

Due to this leadership crises, the BTCL became a loss-incurring company from a profitable venture, they said.

In 2008-09, BTCL’s revenue was Tk 1,689.36 crore and net profit was Tk 106.15 crore. It incurred a loss of Tk 389.39 crore in 2017-18 fiscal. 

The BTCL emerged as a company from state organisation Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board (BTTB) in July 2008. 

Md Nur-Ur-Rahman recently became the secretary of the Posts and Telecommunications Division and also the chairman of the BTRC Board of Directors.

“Definitely it will be a challenge for anyone to run a company only for a few months and we will try to look into the matter in the coming days,” he said.

The Daily Star found that in 2018 the MD changed four times, just like in 2010. In 2014, the BTCL managing director changed three times. 

There have been three MDs this year.

At least 18 MDs were either acting MDs or officials with the additional charge. Some even ran the company for about a week. 

For instance, Absar Alam ran the company twice. His second stint started on November 28, 2010 and ended on December 6 the same year.

Absar had been acting MD for five months earlier that year. 

Only in 2011 and 2017 the BTCL did not have a new MD.

Officials said the government never picked an MD outside of the company, with some bureaucrats being exceptions.

Md Rafiqul Matin was appointed as managing director in November 3 this year.

BTCL Board Chairman Nur-Ur-Rahman said, “... Hopefully the government has chosen a new managing director who is dynamic and quite younger than any of the previous ones ... .” 

Managing Director Rafiqul and a few other deputy managing directors newly appointed were from the same batch. They all have a few years to go before they retire. 

“As we will get more time than our predecessors, we would get more chances to reshape the company and serve the country,” Rafiqul told The Daily Star.

In terms of manpower and licenses it holds, the BTCL is the largest state-owned telecom company in the country. It has eight key licences and about 4,000 employees, even though it has posts for only 8,703.

It has licenses for its core business land phone, International Gateway (IGW), Interconnections exchange (ICX), International Internet Gateway (IIG), Internet Service Provider (ISP), International Terrestrial Cable (ITC), Nationwide Telecommunication Transmission Network (NTTN), and Broadband Wireless Access (BWA).