Anger boiled over at an MTN Ghana office in Darkuman, near Komkompe in the Greater Accra Region, as hundreds of Mobile Money agents descended on the premises in a furious protest, their livelihoods frozen, their funds trapped, and their questions met with what they say are unsatisfactory answers.
The demonstration was sparked by the sudden and unexplained deactivation of the agents’ merchant SIM cards, some of which reportedly hold millions of cedis in funds. For the affected agents, the blocking of their SIMs was not just an inconvenience; it was a direct assault on their businesses and financial security, and they were not prepared to suffer in silence.
One of the agents at the centre of the storm, Kwabena Manu, recounted the moment the crisis began. At around 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, he received a message from MTN informing him that his SIM had been blocked due to an alleged breach of contract. The message, he said, did not explain what that breach actually was. With no clarity and no warning, his SIM, and the funds on it, were simply gone.
Manu said he initially assumed the problem was his alone. It was only when he arrived at the MTN office and found hundreds of fellow agents in the same predicament that the true scale of the situation became apparent. What had seemed like an isolated incident was, in fact, a sweeping action affecting a large number of operators across the network.
The agents’ attempts to seek answers quickly ran into a wall. Officials at the office reportedly told them that the blocked SIMs could only be reactivated upon clearance from the police or an order from a court of competent jurisdiction, a response that did little to calm the mood of the crowd.
Determined to find a resolution, the agents took their grievances to the Odorkor Divisional Police Command. But there too, the path forward proved frustrating. Police asked them to provide details of the alleged contract breach, the very information that MTN had failed to supply. When the agents turned back to MTN for the relevant contract documents, they were reportedly told to seek redress in court.
Caught in a loop with no clear exit, the agents are now calling on MTN to come to the table and engage with them directly. Their message is urgent and unambiguous: their funds remain locked, their businesses are at a standstill, and they want answers, not courtrooms.
Source: Apexnewsgh.com