By To most people, he is probably infamous for being the executive who was appointed to chair the ZBC board for less than 24 hrs before he was fired by Hon Professor Jonathan Moyo for being a king pin in salary gate scandals after receiving a whooping $528 000.00 as salary for his services with Powertel.
This is Dr Dennis Magaya as far as the media craze currently knows him and this unfortunate event has brought him to the limelight more than anything else he has done specifically his annual salary as a ZESA consultant for Powertel, their ISP subsidiary.
Ironically, Dr Magaya has worked for/with more technological companies in Zimbabwe outside Powertel, both Public and private sectors where all the entities actually confirmed that Magaya or his company delivered the required service.
Amongst the top companies, Mr Magaya was the point man at turning around business revenue and network deployment strategy for huge enterprises like Telone and Africom and regionally with Celsys among the top companies and four other regional and international countries where his services rendered delivered positive results.
Wile these salary figures have definitely attracted so much attention, Mr Magaya is not at all moved by the revelations and probably for clarity purposes it’s the way these figures were packaged more than the price tag itself to scrutinize.
As the Executive with Ruebiem Technology, it would have sounded a bit more acceptable for his company to have been charging as flat consultation services not as salary per ser.
The Technological industry fully knows Dr Magaya as a highly skilled man who delivers the job at hand and so far not a single company has complained about his offers and it seems he is only a victim of the current salary gate witch hunt.
Mr Magaya has finally responded to the allegations where he actually pulls out a financial report for his services with Powertel.
Firstly, let me express my gratitude to the Minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, Professor Jonathan Moyo, his Deputy Supa Mandiwanzira and the permanent secretary Mr George Charamba for recognizing my talent and experience in ICT and considering me for the ZBC Board chairman post.
I wish the ZBC board all the success in their endeavors to turn around our national broadcaster into a viable institution.
I am sure ZBC will continue to tell the Zimbabwean story to the world with pride anchored on the country’s liberation history and to contribute to a future of transparency and progress.
Secondly, turning to PowerTel matters, I was engaged on the basis of my ICT professional expertise and experience in business transformation strategies and in terms of a contract that governs the employment relationship and determination thereof.
In 2011, PowerTel made a loss and a new strategy was required which I crafted. The strategic objective was to transform PowerTel to a top communications company in Zimbabwe.
Since my engagement in 2012, the following published achievements were made:a. The PowerTel 2012 Annual Report and Audited Financial Results show that
i. Profit After Tax grew from a loss of -$162,507 in 2011 to a profit of US$2.2Million in 2012.
ii. Profit Before Tax grew by 623% from US$448,537 in 2011 to US$3,119,188 in 2012
iii. Revenue grew by 23% from US$16.38 million in 2011 to US$20.25 Million in 2012 -PowerTel became one of the most profitable State Owned Enterprise.
iv. Debt to equity ratio was 86% an improvement of 92% from prior year
v. In 2012, PowerTel supplied 40% of Zimbabwe’s Internet bandwidth up from 25% in 2011
vi. PowerTel was awarded first position in Best Marketing Effort in Parastatal category and came Second runner-up in ICT Category in the Marketers Association of Zimbabwe (MAZ) Super Brand Awards in 2012b. The 2013 Annual Report is not published yet but we expect the profitable growth trend to continuec. The following Projects were successfully implemented within 15 months and I am sure PowerTel customers will soon enjoy the full benefits after commercial launch
i. A new state-of-the-art converged Billing and Customer Care system
ii. Increased mobile data coverage from 2 cities in 2011 to 16 cities in 2013
iii. A new world-class and high capacity switch and a network operations center
iv. A new call center system
v. We increased the number of shops by 12 times. The flagship shop is at Joina city in Harare
vi. We increased the number of products by 8 times compared to 2011
vii. We changed the brand positioning including the corporate logo, pay-off line and colours.
d. The full impact in revenue upswing for these new projects is in the making since aggressive monetization strategies will be pursued in 2014 onwards. As with complex business transformation projects, there are some areas that are lagging behind and we are busy fixing them
e. We significantly optimized costs in both operational expenses and capital expenditure.
I had preliminary contacts with the Minister of Energy, Hon. Dzikamai Mavhaire in an attempt to give him my perspective on my PowerTel engagements and achievements and he promised we would meet soonest to discuss.
I am a professional and always endeavor to remain out of matters of political inclination.
I want to assure my fellow Zimbabweans, the authorities concerned, the Rubiem Technologies employees (Rubiem Technologies is a Pan African consultancy company of which I am CEO) and partners that all my work is done with integrity and always within the laws of the land.
I remain a proud Zimbabwean who has carried the national flag high through honest and credible work in the region.The results and facts on the ground including the PowerTel 2012 annual report speak for themselves.
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