Business Times reports that the MTN Group is seeking a visa dispensation to recruit electrical engineers from other African countries to help manage its towers and network as it transitions some infrastructure off the grid in the face of intensive load-shedding.

The skills needed are largely unavailable in South Africa, group CEO Ralph Mupita said during the company's financial results presentation last week. “We have to bring in people from Egypt and Nigeria but the challenge is the visa process. So under the national state of disaster we will seek special dispensation around the visa regime to enable us to bring skill sets to manage sites that are largely off-grid,” he advised. MTN – whose areas of operation include Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia – and its competitors are in discussions with regulators to approve roaming agreements in the event of a grid collapse and the sharing of alternative power sources for their network infrastructure. “We don't think stage 8 and total grid collapse is highly probable; it's a low probability event. But obviously we need to plan for that low probability event,” said Mupita. Vodacom spokesperson Byron Kennedy said: “We believe that since the solution to the current electricity crisis is not imminent, it is crucial that the industry be afforded the ability to work together through a special dispensation approved by relevant authorities, including the Competition Commission, so that competitors can collaborate where necessary.”

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thabiso Mochiko at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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