The Telecommunications engineer, Alain Bernard Ewengue, was appointed on July 24 as the head of the Post and Telecommunications General Directorate. As the sector is dynamic, regulations must adapt with the arrival of new players on the national market, the newly appointed has vowed.
Alain Bernard Ewengue has promised to put his long experience of nearly forty years in this environment at the service of the development of the Congolese post office and the telecom, including the survival of public operators. “We are aware of the immensity of the task that awaits us”, he confided, in reference to the economic and social crisis which paralyzes the Congo Post and Savings Company (SOPECO) and the reform of Congo telecom.
The general management for which he is responsible was born from the ashes of the post and telecommunications administration, which is also the ancestor of the Regulatory Agency for Posts and Electronic Communications (ARPCE). It is in charge of the regulation of the sector, of regulatory monitoring in order to enable ARPCE to have the available texts necessary to regulate the sector. Its administration works in collaboration with the regulatory authority in order to formulate technical proposals to the supervisory authority for draft laws or regulatory texts adapted to technological developments.
But the image of this economic sector has been damaged in recent years, mainly due to the deleterious state of state-owned enterprises which once held a monopoly on the national market. In the transformation of the post office, according to Alain Bernard Ewengue, the state missed a mark, that of the separation between the Postal Bank and the letter post. The new Director-General is in favour of changes in legislation in this area.
“The authorities wanted to turn postal checks into a bank, which is not conducive to the growth of the current post office. It was this separation between the financial service of the post office and the letter post that got the better of Sopéco. The Postal Bank is managed by the Ministry of Finance and Budget and the post office has remained under the same supervision. This aspect must be taken into account in reform to give it a financial service, ”he said.
In addition, he was reassuring about the ongoing reform of the Congo Telecom company. The operator has just changed from a one-person limited company status to a public limited company with a board of directors. “For Congo Telecom to survive in the competition, it must sell both products: voice and data. We will also have to meet the challenge of training managers, ”he insisted.
