MTN has rubbished talk that any of the company’s clients have been disconnected by disgruntled workers, describing such suggestions as a “classic disinformation campaign”.

Reports of alleged disconnections started surfacing early on Thursday after a Johannesburg-based talk radio station took a call from a listener complaining about not having access to the MTN network.

The suggestion from the caller, who had allegedly spoken to a worker in MTN’s branch in Springs, was that unhappy employees were switching off mobile contracts — 200 000 of them, according to the caller — and that this was done “out of spite”.

Members of the Communication Workers Union — most of them working in MTN’s call centre operations — are involved in a protracted strike, demanding better pay from the mobile operator.

But MTN South Africa human resources executive Themba Nyathi said there is absolutely no truth to suggestions that customers have been cut off by rogue employees.

“It’s a classic disinformation campaign. Our IT systems can pick up anyone disconnecting customers. It’s a false story,” he said.