Government lauds MTN for additional 5 million suppport to the national COVID-19 trust fund

MTN Ghana Foundation has donated GHC5Million to National Covid Trust Fund to support the government’s effort in combating the Corona Virus pandemic in the country. This presentation brings MTN’s total contribution to the National COVID-19 Trust Fund to Ghc10 million.

Speaking at a ceremony to present the cheque to Trustees of the Fund at the Jubilee House, the CEO of MTN Ghana, Mr. Selorm Adadevoh expressed his gladness at the opportunity given to MTN to demonstrate its commitment to the people of Ghana by supporting the Trust Fund in their fight against COVID-19.

He said, “Our support to the Trust Fund is to ensure the Government’s strategy in combating the pandemic is fully achieved”.

“We believe this will help immensely to provide the needed PPES, education, and other services for the people of Ghana and most importantly to brighten lives as we celebrate our 25th Anniversary”, he added.

Receiving the cheque on behalf of the Trustee of the National Covid Trust Fund, the chairperson of the Fund, Justice Sophia Akuffo, said, “The contributions have dwindled over the past year. I'm happy that MTN Ghana has come through. MTN Ghana has been a key supporter of the Covid Trust Fund and has contributed a total sum of 10 million Ghana cedis. It is one of the few organizations to have contributed this much to support the fight against COVID-19 in Ghana. We are truly grateful for their assistance.”

She added that “There seems to be this false notion among the public that the pandemic is gone. The fact is the extent of the pandemic has been quite devastating and continues to cause death. There seems to be evidence of a new variant developing. We continue to encourage the Ghanaian citizenry to continue to adhere to all the COVID-19 protocols. We also strongly encourage that you get vaccinated. We are grateful to MTN and we hope other organizations will follow their example as we all work to fight his deadly virus.”

The donation to the National COVID-19 Trust Fund is one of the many interventions by MTN Ghana to help stem the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time when the nation was highly in need of PPEs, test kits, and PCR Machines in 2020, the MTN Ghana Foundation donated 44,000 Personal Protective Equipment, four (4) Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Machines, and Test Kits to the National COVID Trust at the cost of GHS 5 Million. The donation was to help the National Covid Trust Fund enhance the protection of all health personnel in the fight against COVID -19 in the Country.

Some of the other key interventions include Collaboration with the National Information Technology Authority (NITA) to offer all Government workers free access to the Smart Workplace Portal to support the Government’s work from home program, protecting the customer through the provision of critical health information, providing free internet access to over 200 websites for online education for public and private institutions, free MoMo transfers up to Ghc100 a day and revision of MoMo wallet limits.

MTN Ghana supported the infection monitoring and contact tracing team through the provision of 800 SIM Cards and 8 Terabytes of data to National Security and 10 TurboNet fixed wireless devices with over 2 terabytes of data to the COVID-19 Response Team for use by contact tracers. MTN has also deployed mobile money merchant accounts as collection conduits to support Government institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and the First Lady’s mobilization fund for COVID-19.

MTN Ghana also contributed three educational campaigns aimed at getting people to live responsibly. “Be Wise”, Wear it for me” and “One More Push” campaigns were to encourage people across the continent not to give up in the fight against COVID-19, and to continue to wear their masks, wash their hands and practice social distancing.

On the vaccination front, MTN Group donated USD$25million to support AU’s vaccination rollout across 55 member states to cover 7 million vaccine doses for health workers.

MTN Ghana Foundation will continue to support efforts aimed at mitigating the impact of COVID-19 in Ghana.