Senate set to slash GSM charges, sanction defaulters Posted by: "NOK." [EMAIL PROTECTED] osamwonyi Fri Sep 14, 2007 1:42 pm (PST) Senate set to slash GSM charges, sanction defaulters By BASHIR UMAR, Abuja Friday September 14, 2007
President of the Senate, Senator David Mark, has called on GSM telephone operators in Nigeria to reduce their service charges in order to favour the ordinary Nigerians or face the wrath of the nation’s lawmakers. He also warned that henceforth, anybody invited by the Senate must appear before it in person to answer questions on any given issue either during the plenary sessions or at committee sittings, failure of which would attract a sanction. Talking tough while inaugurating the Senate Committee on Communications, Senator Mark described as irresponsible and criminal any Chief Executive Officer in public or private “who would flagrantly avoid an invitation coming from the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria without giving a convincing reason for doing so.” Reacting to the Senate Chairman Committee on Communication’ s outcry that some Chief Executives of the GSM Operators in the country have refused to respond to the Committee’s invitation on the GSM service delivery, Senator Mark said: “If you say you don’t appear before us, you are saying that you are too big to appear before the representatives of the whole country, and that is too rude.” He, therefore, warned that henceforth anybody who refused to honor the Senate invitation would be sanctioned, pointing out that “we are not here for joke and no Nigerian, no matter how highly placed, must disregard our invitation.” In his opening address earlier, the Senate Committee Chairman on Communications, Senator Sylvester Anyanwu, noted with dismay that in spite of the gains offered by the deregulation of communication sector, it was “still grappling with series of service problems to the chagrin of all and sundry.” “Even though the subscriber level in the country has reached a whopping 40 million, the tariff is still high, while the percentage of call completion rate and drop call have given Nigerians serious head and heartaches,” he regretted. He said the question of poor service quality by GSM service providers had engaged the attention of the senate since 2003, and that only recently, he had sponsored a motion on the increasing rate of drop calls due to inefficient GSM network in Nigeria The Nigerian Telecommunications Service (NITEL) also did not help matters, Senator Anyanwu said, as, according to him, “the situation in the industry would not have been this grave if NITEL that is supposed to provide national backbone infrastructure had lived up to expectations.” “It is saddening to note that while it took NITEL and its historical forebears nearly 100 years to connect 500,000 users, GSM notched the same subscriber base within two months. There is prevalent of basic telephone services in most parts of the country because of the failure of the telephone monopoly to install lines as required,” he said, adding that if NITEL lines were fixed in homes and offices, the pressure on GSM would have been reduced. According to him, “the scenario that played out itself in NITEL, in spite of its lofty objectives of realising investments in telecommunications development and providing easy access, efficient and affordable services, reveals a serious shortfalls between planned targets and their realization, principally because of poor management, lack of accountability and transparency and low-level indigenous technical know-how.” He then frowned at the snail speed with which the Ministry of Communication is handling the National Rural Telephony initiative, pointing out that “we are aware that the contract for the execution of the second phase of the project has been awarded even when work on the first phase remained inconclusive, in spite of the billions of naira that has been allocated to expedite action on the project since its commencement. In addition, he said, “records available to our committee shows that a particular contractor has been paid full amount of total contract sum before it commenced actual work on the project and this is quite disheartening, particularly when major contractors handling the Rural Telephony Project are foreign companies.” ” He, therefore, warned that the Senate must not allow the boom brought by communication to be turned into a doom for Nigeria . Other Senate Committees inaugurated by the Senate President yesterday were those on Women Affairs, Ethics and Sports. http://www.sunnewsonline.com/webpages/news/national/2007/sept/14/national-14-09-2007-007.htm ____________________________________________________________________________________ Fussy? Opinionated? Impossible to please? Perfect. Join Yahoo!'s user panel and lay it on us. http://surveylink.yahoo.com/gmrs/yahoo_panel_invite.asp?a=7
