There has been a rising scuffle between the Cameroonian and Vietnamese employees of the mobile telephone provider Viettel Cameroon just four months to its official opening.
According to reports by employees of heavy recruitment of Vietnamese executives to the company while sidelining the Cameroonian workers interest into the same offices causing tension between the two sides. The employees have reiterated that Viettel Cameroon currently has 317 predominantly senior employees out of a total of 600 on staff. Company heads of challenged this claim with the estimate that the number of Vietnamese recruited is between 100 and 150. At the signing of its contract in 2012, the Vietnamese company had announced the creation of 6,300 jobs in the country.
Meanwhile, the company’s managing director Moise Bayi has dismissed the claims saying the Vietnamese executives were transferred to the company for the technology and improve the company’s image by using their own infrastructure rather than of their competitors
On the other hand, the head of the Vietnamese company’s subsidiary has stated that there have been cultural barriers between the Cameroonian and Vietnamese which has hindered performance of the company
“We have a western mentality. They share with us and we share with them. We are learning to work together. It is true that, at first, we had some problems but these are steadily dissolving,” stated the Managing Director of Viettel Cameroon,
This comes just few months ago after yet another falling out between Vietnamese and Cameroonian that started within the company on the division of the company’s social capital but in March 2014 a deal was struck by Nguyen Duy Tho, Managing Director of Viettel Global JSC, and Ahmadou Baba Danpullo, the head of Bestinver Cameroon, the Vietnamese company’s local partner.
On the accord reached by the two it was accepted that Ahmadou Baba Danpullo would remain as chairman of the board at Viettel Cameroon, keeping 30% of capital. In exchange, Nguyen Duy Tho becomes deputy chairman of the board while the company, which was a limited liability company becomes a public limited company with 20 million FCfa in capital.