This article first appeared in The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 27, 2023 - December 3, 2023

CelcomDigi Bhd took home the gold award in the telecommunications and media sector at The Edge Malaysia ESG Awards 2023. Joachim Rajaram, its chief corporate affairs officer, attributes the success to the coming together of two established sustainability-minded entities.

“[The merger between Celcom and Digi] in December 2022 brought together two leading [telecommunications companies] with established sustainability practices … The merger presents new opportunities to leverage strengths and optimise resources,” he says.

The relevant teams in the company had to evaluate ongoing practices and initiatives, he continues. This included replanning and prioritising efforts that were most beneficial and could positively impact CelcomDigi’s broader stakeholder groups.

That has led to the upskilling of workers across various levels, from the board of directors to leadership teams, to ensure they are able to keep up with evolving trends and expectations that are aligned with industry practices and global standards.

CelcomDigi focuses on operating with high standards of responsibility, which covers material ESG issues such as digital inclusion, privacy, data protection, human rights, health, safety and climate action, says Joachim.

This has allowed the company to remain conscious of its impact on the ecosystem in its goal of building an inclusive and progressive organisation. The company’s ESG targets and performance are anchored at the management level and monitored regularly at the board level, he adds.

Due to the consolidation of these established practices, CelcomDigi has been able to utilise its resources to gain a larger view of the digitalisation landscape. Joachim sees opportunities in accelerating innovation to tackle global issues such as climate change, privacy and cybersecurity.

“[When it comes to cybersecurity,] scams are of particular concern, as the nature of this cybercrime is becoming increasingly unpredictable due to technology becoming more complex,” he says. He points out that there has been a drastic increase in digital nomads and those who do shopping and banking online since the pandemic, thus increasing their risk of being scammed.

“As part of CelcomDigi’s goal to be a brand that customers can trust and rely on in the age of ‘digital everything’, CelcomDigi has been proactively combating this key social risk in the digital age by building an ecosystem of partners for collective action,” says Joachim.

For instance, the company launched an anti-scam campaign earlier this year, in partnership with CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Anti-scam Action Coalition, which includes awareness and prevention programmes for various segments of the population.

“We have also been educating youth and schoolchildren on digital safety through our Safe Internet talks,” he says, adding that the company ensures its educational resources are easily available on its Safe Internet web page.

“Beyond that, we work with the authorities to raise compliance standards and adopt technology solutions to improve detection, disruption and prevention of scams on our network. This is imperative to protecting and building trust with our customers, especially among the most vulnerable groups, such as seniors and young people.”

According to Joachim, there is still much to be done for CelcomDigi’s ESG goals, such as deepening and facilitating open engagements with stakeholder groups. He says, “Timely and transparent access to national policies and road maps would help in providing a direction for [corporations] to effectively undertake forward-looking planning and investments.”

CelcomDigi hopes to spur more collaborative ecosystems to advance its ESG ambitions — along with the right national-level policies and regulatory instruments — as new innovation in connectivity and digital services “can pave the way for cross-sectoral innovations, empowering users, industries and cities through smart solutions”, he adds.

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