The Portfolio Committee of Small Business Development has condemned Telkom and its subsidiary, Openserve, for refusing to pay small independent field technician companies for services rendered.
The committee came to the resounding conclusion that Telkom should pay the SMMEs, accusing it of bullying small businesses to their detriment.
The battle between Telkom, Openserve and small independent field technician companies raged on in a Parliamentary meeting this week. The company, its subsidiary, and committee members met disgruntled SMMEs, who are still owed money for contractual disputes that began five years ago.
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The disputes had to do with the failures that Openserve customers reported after the SMMEs were contracted to install fibre in communities around the country.
Eleven SMMEs brought a petition before Parliament in February, and after the first meeting, seven of them removed themselves from the petition, citing satisfaction with the steps Openserve took to resolve the disputes.
However, four SMMEs were still dissatisfied, and the committee stood behind them and accused the telecommunications giant of bullying and unethical business practices.
Sithembile Xolo of Folo Electrical (PTY) Ltd said that the network failures the customers reported were due to the infrastructure that Telkom had refused to upgrade.
“We engaged with Telkom from as early as 2016 and highlighted the issue that the reason why failures were reported was that the infrastructure was bad,” he told the meeting.
“What causes a line to fail completely is because the infrastructure underground is corroded, and we have no access to the infrastructure since it is underground, and we are prohibited from accessing it.”
Xolo said it was unfair that Telkom refused to pay them their money when the connection failures were due to poor infrastructure.
Evelyn Smith, director of Sudane Projects and Services, said that Telkom had refused to pay them for circumstances beyond their control such as theft and infrastructure vandalism.
Committee member Dumisani Mthenjane said that the portfolio committee would be failing SMMEs and the country if they did not take action against Telkom and Openserve.
“Many SMMEs are suffering from bullying tactics from state-owned enterprises, and we should perhaps have a programme where we summon every state-owned enterprise to account for how they do business with SMMEs, and invite SMMEs to share their side of the story,” he said.
Member Faiez Jacobs, who was the acting chair of the meeting, delivered a scathing criticism against Telkom and Openserve.
“The Telkom board and its management structure are paid exorbitant amounts of money and yet they fail to resolve such a simple matter,” he said.
“We are where we were when we started, and what we’re getting from Openserve and Telkom is that (they) are undermining our intelligence and capability and being disrespectful to this office.”
Jacobs said that the committee was unanimous in recommending that Telkom and Openserve pay these SMMEs, warning that the committee would seek legal resources to take the matter forward.
