BTCL’s high turnover rate of MDs

It is a befuddling tale that the state-owned Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd (BTCL) has been spinning for the 11 years of its life. In these eleven years the organisation has had as many as 19 Managing Directors (MDs), with some of them holding the post multiple times. There is no official reason for such a high turnover rate of MDs but the outcome of this bizarre state of affairs is hardly surprising. From a profitable venture, the company has become a losing concern with a loss of TK 389.36 crore in the last fiscal year.

With a constant change in leadership, the company's top management has not been able to address bottlenecks or take care of its development and plan for the future. It is an example of how state-owned enterprises are run to the ground because of lack of vision and total concentration being devoted to mostly pleasing certain people within the organisation, giving them the post as a temporary position rather than basing the promotion on proper evaluation of performance. In BTCL's case, most of the MDs were picked from within the company except for a few bureaucrats. We are quite mystified by such an illogical way of choosing the topmost leadership, upon whom the survival and success of the company lies.

The chairman of the company's board has been quoted in a report as saying that "hopefully the government has chosen a new managing director who is dynamic and quite younger than the previous ones…" It is rather disappointing that even after 11 years and with such substantial losses to make up for, the board is still only "hopeful" about a younger, more effective leadership. We cannot overlook the fact that BTCL is a state-owned company and run by public funds. It has moreover, a huge potential to be an efficient, profitable company that will provide a valuable service to the people. Thus, it is incumbent on the government to appoint qualified leaders who will be in the top positions long enough to make a real change in the company's balance sheet as well as image. The sooner it does this the less money the government will lose.