Apparently, the sacked group of workers were attached to ZTE Uganda as technical support technicians and engineers to partner telecom companies in different departments. Among these, 2 are female and 4 are male namely.

• Hermenegild Sseyiga
• Geoffrey Sserwanga
• Emmanuel Okurut Omoding
• Patrick Okoth
• Damalie Nalumu
• Ambrose Ayebare
• Samuel Mulumba.

Through their legal team, the sacked employees have filed a lawsuit against the telecommunications giant for wrongful and unlawful dismissal from work on top of breach of contract, breach of trust, breach of confidence, injury to reputation, financial loss, aggravated and special damages on their careers.

Submitted Court documents show that the group was pouched by the company from telecommunication and IT firms to join the newly established Uganda wing of ZTE despite a low tune of brand name visibility since the brand’s elementary stages.

But with promises of offering a long, enjoyable, stable, and rewarding career. The group was lured into joining ZTE as a multi-national giant with a now layed footprint in the Pearl of Africa which only led to unwarned and uncertain dismissal in the end.

As per the lawsuit, the complainants were shown an exit door by the ZTE Uganda Human resource Manager on 8^th June 2017 without any prior notice nor warning despite no wrong or breach of contract done by the employees.

It is alleged that the termination was procured by dishonest, misrepresentation, fraud, and illegality. And so, this filled a tone of bad faith on part of the company and the sacked employees in breach of their employment agreement.

A Response from ZTE Uganda

When alerts of a lawsuit reached ZTE Uganda, the company denied any of the stated by the employees, but simply linked them to their Mobile telecom partners that outsource certain human resource from it, and so, the telco employees in charge of the sated functions were automatically called back by the company.

As per the ZTE statement, it denies any poaching of the stated employees, but simply sourced them from the partner sides for inhouse duties. Furthermore, the company inked that their employment contracts had a termination clause which was taken into effect.

In the course of a restricting exercise given the unstable business environment faced by the company then, the complainant positions were rendered redundant by the company.

Additionally, as per Court documents, ZTE Uganda Limited merged several positions during the restructuring process, and instead, it ignored the termination clause embedded in the employee contracts where the company is required to provide a 1-month prior notice and pay a salary in line with the notice.

Currently, the lawsuit is pending active judgement before the industrial court challenging a decision made by the labor officer that awarded about UGX 300 Million to the sacked employees.

The labor officer ruled that the group was wrongfully terminated by ZTE Uganda and so, the company was warranted to compensate them for the unwarned dismissal.

In the meantime, all complainant terminal benefits have been cleared as provided by the law and contract inter parties, but a pending judgement stands to decide ZTE’s fate on clearing the sacked employees.

Now, ZTE has been subjected to new US bribery Investigations centered on bribery of foreign officials to beautify the company’s operations worldwide.

Previously, ZTE paid over $900 million to settle its status with the US after it pleaded guilty to Investigations in 2017. The equipment manufacturer was reportedly purchasing US equipment, Incorporating it as ZTE’s , then shipping it to Iran and North Korea.

A year later the Trump administration banned US companies from trading with ZTE in a fashion similar to Huawei’s current ban.

However, the ban was lifted when ZTE paid a $1billion fine to the US treasury, and now, the equipment manufacturer is back to square 1 with new Investigations underway.

ZTE reportedly paid bribes to foreign officials in more than a dozen of countries including Algeria, Liberia, Zimbabwe, Kenya among others.

With Kenya as an example by NBC news, ZTE attracted question marks on how it won a 2009 bid to install landline telephone monitoring equipment for the Nation’s Intelligence service.

Leaked reports later showed that ZTE had paid bribes to top-ranking officials from the agency to win the supply deal according to WikiLeaks.

In 2016, Norway banned ZTE from the country’s investment ecosystem over corruption, and ZTE shares can never be purchased by the Norwegian fund since then.

ZTE being an underdog competitor to Huawei Technologies, its fate with US Investigations might see it face Huawei-like bans, and an entry on the current entity list.

Since May 2019, Huawei has been on the US entity list, and this has affected its worldwide operations including a delay in 5G tests in most countries since it’s ranked as a major equipment supplier.

If the ZTE investigations place it on a guilty plake, and granted an entry on the US entity list, then, ZTE could be banned in major countries plus its telecom equipment barred from usage by several telcos around the world.