TUJIKUMBUSHE: GREEDY MACHINATIONS OF TIGO AND WORLDREMIT BLASTED BY DIASPORA TANZANIANS!

Sunday, September 13, 2015

GREEDY MACHINATIONS OF TIGO AND WORLDREMIT BLASTED BY DIASPORA TANZANIANS!

It is now evident that Tigo usurped the remittance business from the People's Bank of Zanzibar Limited (PBZ) in a bright day-light ambush - the business that the bank established and successfully built with the diaspora Tanzanians since early 2013.

With the success of its cash pick up and direct bank deposit services for diaspora customers at PBZ branches in Dar Es Salaam, Zanzibar and Pemba, the bank expanded its online business by introducing mobile remittance services and therefore called upon Tigo and other mobile phone providers in the country (Zantel, Airtel and Vodacom) to offer mobile remittance services to PBZ's established customers in the diaspora communities through a London based company calledWorldRemit Financial Services.

Tigo’s act of secretly entering into a direct partnership with WorldRemit and disrupting its association with PBZ - the bank that introduced Tigo to the diaspora business is seen by many here in Zanzibar as being greedy, unethical and above all being un-professional on their part.

"Tigo should not expect a single Dollar from our diaspora communities. We would use the option of cash pick or even send money to our parents through the informal money transfer system, commonly known as hawala rather than through the Tigo Pesa”, retorted some angry members of the diaspora community in Canada who were instrumental in bringing WorldRemit to Tanzania and at the same time spearheaded and masterminded the diaspora remittance service through the People's Bank of Zanzibar Limited.

"Tigo as cunning as it has shown to be, waited for an opportune moment when the business was booming at over a billion Shillings per month in order to strike it rich and indeed it did strike it rich this early August by signing a permanent contract with World Remit and thereby abruptly stopping to be a service provider to the bank”, says an agitated insider of the bank.

"Why do you contract out a billion Shillings a month worth of business to a company as greedy as a pig?”, quipped the insider employee of the bank who did not want his name to be revealed as he might lose his job.

With the introduction of the low fees and efficient remittance services by PBZ and WorldRemit, many Tanzanians in the diaspora were jubilant, as they looked at Zanzibar (which has few resources for earning foreign exchange) with a renewed gleam in their eyes praising the bank for the right innovative idea at the right time. But, that gleam has now faded away into a total darkness as Tigo took possession of the business out of the blue.

It is said that the business that Tigo usurped from PBZ, at its peak would have brought into Zanzibar's coffers a figure more than 50% of what Zanzibar earns per year from the clove industry - the industry which is the mainstay of its economy.

In 2014 Zanzibar earned around 65 million Dollars from the export of cloves, while the remittance business now at its infancy was bringing in from the diaspora communities more than USD750,000 per month and that figure was expected to quadruple within a few years’ time.

Tigo is a Millicom company. Millicom is a multi-national company with conglomerate businesses and with Corporate Offices in America, Sweden, Luxembourg and United Kingdom. It is purely a capitalist company lead by profit motives, so is WorldRemit - and so the two companies are like men in suits who cannot care about the plight of Zanzibar's economy!

Undoubtedly, it is a tough experience for the People’s Bank of Zanzibar. As they say, 'mwenye nguvu mpishe' and that tough experiences are always a nourishment to the soul.

In any business, there will always be hitches and hurts. Nothing runs smoothly in business especially in today’s dog-eat-dog world. The business world is always inundated with Tigo sharks.

The old would always say, you cannot embrace a rose without accommodating its thorns. Some will gain and some will lose. But, when you lose learn the lesson and you will gain everything.

We hope the People’s Bank of Zanzibar has learned the lesson and will never trust to share its services and business ideas again with any other companies, let alone greedy ones!

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Posted by Swahili Villa