Sri Lanka Telecom heads roll over for the second time in seven months
By: Staff Writer
February 02, Colombo (LNW): Sri Lanka Telecom has seen its leadership change for the second time in about seven months with the entity affirming the appointment of a new Chairman.
The stressed state-owned telco, which has been making headlines this week for the changes in its Board, disclosed to the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) that upon the review and recommendation of the Nominations and Governance Committee, A.K.D.D.D. Arandara has been appointed as a Non-Independent Non-Executive Director and Chairman with effect from 1 February.
The resignations by six Board members follows the President Ranil Wickremesinghe on 24 January directing the Treasury Secretary to reconstitute the SLT Board with immediate effect. The new Government members proposed are K.D.D.D. Arandara (Chairman), Dr. K.A.S. Keeragala, Dinesh Vidanapathirana, Prof. K.M. Liyanage, Dr. D.M.I.S. Dassanayake and Chathura Mohottigedara. Separately Rohan Fernando also resigned as Chairperson of eChanneling Plc, a subsidiary of SLT.
Global Telecommunications Holdings NV/Malaysia’s Maxis holds 45% stake and has four nominees on the SLT Board.
Analysts opined the resignations by some of the incumbent was interesting as previously it was anticipated they wouldn’t.
The reconstitution follows the Government not being happy with SLT-Mobitel challenging in Court the proposed merger between industry leader Dialog Axiata and Airtel especially with regard to spectrum issues with Telecommunications Regulatory Commission cited as a respondent.
Arandara, currently serves as the Additional Director General of the Department of Legal Affairs of the Treasury. He joined the public service in 2000 and has served as the Senior Assistant Secretary of the Ministry of Justice and Director General of the Consumer Affairs Authority.
He is a lawyer with 25-year experience in legal profession. He has also held the positions of board member of the Post Graduate Institute of Medicine, Sri Lanka Independent Television Network, Prima Ceylon, Sri Lanka Ayurvedic Corporation and currently serving at SriLankan Airlines.
Arandara was originally recommended as the new Chairman along with new set of six nominees as Government representatives to SLT Board. He replaces Reyaz Mihular who resigned along with five others.
Earlier this week, Reyaz Mihular stepped down from his position as Chairman after the government said it would reconstitute the SLT Board. The decision was due to the latter refusing to withdraw the case against the proposed merger between industry leader Dialog Axiata and Airtel.
Mid-last year, Mobitel initiated legal action against Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) and Dialog, Airtel among others stating that proposed merger and action to combine spectrum allocations and/or permit the combination of spectrum of Dialog and Airtel without surrendering the spectrum enabling TRC to reallocate it among the existing operators according to law.
Mobitel is of the view that failure by TRC would be illegal, wrongful, unlawful, arbitrary, unreasonable and capricious etc.
