Uganda Telecom Ltd the country’s oldest telecom has been placed under receivership by the Ugandan government.
In law, receivership is a situation in which an institution or enterprise is held by a receiver—a person “placed in the custodial responsibility for the property of others, including tangible and intangible assets and rights”—especially in cases where a company cannot meet financial obligations or enters bankruptcy.
On February 25th the Government took over the full control of UTL after the Libyan majority shareholder, UCom unilaterally pulled out of the embattled telecom company.
According to the East African, the Minister for Investment, Ms Evelyn Anite said that government has evaluated and found that the telco’s liability far outweighed its assets but has resisted a push to wind it up. She further said this is the only chance to save the troubled telecom company.
Speaking at a press conference at the Ministry of Finance HQ the Minister said ;
“Putting UTL under an administrator is the best news for subscribers,” Ms Anite said, “I can assure that if you are a UTL subscriber, it will be here tomorrow and the day after, in fact I want to encourage more Ugandans to have UTL as their first line.”
Uganda Telecom is believed to owe about Ush128 billion ($34.7million) in debts.
