Vodacom donates 20000 phones to help fight COVID-19.
To fight the coronavirus in South Africa, the Vodacom group limited has made an effort by donating 20,000 smartphones to the frontline health workers in South Africa.
The company believes that the government alone cannot fight the pandemic and will need help from both individuals and organizational bodies. With this, the company announced donating the 20000 smartphones, 1000 terabytes of data, 10 million voice call minutes to the front line health workers through the department of health in South Africa.
The effort when executed, will help the front line workers to collect data, and plan well as the government looks forward to overcoming this disease.
According to the CEO of Vodacom Shameel Joosub, they seek to support the government in obtaining its objective of the coronavirus fight in the country. They also believe their effort will help curve and lower the infection rate of the virus. “Through this initiative, Vodacom seeks to support the government’s objectives to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus by flattening the curve and lowering the infection rate.”
Shameel Joosub also added that to achieve this, collaborative effort must come to play and they are delighted Samsung Africa has also come to support them with several 5000 smartphones. Joosub continues by saying Vodacom is committed to offering their best as far as they can. “Achieving this will require a massive collaborative effort and we’re delighted with Samsung Africa’s investment of 5000 smartphones into this initiative. Vodacom is willing and committed to do whatever we can to help.”
Commenting on the issue, CEO and President of Samsung Africa, Sung Yoon express how confident they are that technology has a major role to play if they want to fight this virus. It was further stated that the smartphones will enhance contact tracing and communication.
“As Samsung, we are conscious of the increasingly important role technology will have in the fight against COVID-19. Our frontline workers need to be equipped with secure smartphones that enable quick contact tracing and communication to slow down the rate of infections in the country.”
“Dealing with the pandemic requires a strong collaboration between the Government and the private sector and we are honored to have been able to contribute to this project with Vodacom. As a partner to South Africa, we also wanted to acknowledge the Government’s efforts to date and are committed to assisting where we can.”