The Federal Government has threatened to prosecute
telecommunication service providers who continue to render poor quality
services to subscribers after December 31, 2013.
The plan to prosecute errant telecoms operators was unfolded
in Lagos on Monday at a joint news briefing addressed by the Minister of
Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson; Director-General, Consumer
Protection Council, Mrs. Dupe Atoki; and Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian
Communications Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah.
Atoki said the errant operators risked prosecution and jail
terms of up to five years if ongoing investigations revealed that they had
deliberately short-changed Nigerians through poor service delivery.
“The CPC can make orders in the interest and protection of
consumers, and disobedience is also criminalised by law. While the NCC can
impose fines on an offending operator, the CPC can, in addition, commit such
recalcitrant offender to jail term for contravening any consumer protection
enactment,” she explained.
Atoki said the challenge of doing business in the country
was the usual justification by the service providers for the violation of
consumer rights, but noted that as far as the CPC was concerned and as long as
a business was in operation and consumers were paying for its service or
product, the consumers must get value for their money.
“Under the Consumer Protection Council Act, the CPC has the
power to sanction, prosecute and compel any product or service provider to
answer a lawful inquiry, disobedience of which is criminalised,” she said.
Earlier, Johnson had said that despite the fact that her
ministry had been working hard to provide an enabling environment for the deployment
of Information Communication Technology infrastructure like base stations and
fibre optic cables, the poor quality of service persisted.
According to the minister, subscribers are daily faced with
poor network service delivery that makes it impossible for them to receive
calls, while also experiencing drop calls and lack of sustainability of calls,
unsolicited text messages at odd hours, unsolicited telemarketing calls,
deceptive broadband speed adverts by some service providers and failure of service
delivery without compensation to consumers.
Others are insufficient customer care lines, unrelenting
sales promotion despite poor network service delivery, non-compensation to
consumers for loss of airtime and poor service delivery, network insecurities
characterised by uncontrollable interruptions on networks by unidentifiable
third parties.
The operators have in the last few years listed the
challenges confronting and limiting their ability to deliver effective quality
services as multiple regulation and taxation; illegal access denials and site
shut-outs; inadequate power supply; lack of incentives to drive service
penetration to remote and rural areas; rent seeking charges for permits and
approvals necessary for deployment; and insecurity, among others.
Johnson, however, said her ministry and the Works ministry
had developed new Right of Way guidelines for Federal Government roads to
enable the operators to have unencumbered means of laying fibre optics, which
is critical for infrastructure development and quality of service.
To remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxation
that impede telecoms development across the nation, she said for the first time
in the history of Nigeria’s telecoms revolution, her ministry had got state
governors and relevant authorities at the state and federal levels to address
the issue and adopt measures to remove arbitrary charges in order to enhance
service delivery across the nation.
She said, “At a meeting behind closed doors with Governor Babatunde Fashola last week,
the ministry facilitated a landmark agreement to remove constraints to the
installation, rollout and deployment of base stations and fibre optic cables in
the state. The Lagos State Government at the meeting agreed to reduce taxes and
levies by over 40 per cent and Right of Way fee was reduced from N3,000 to
N500, a reduction of over 85 per cent.
“We are concerned that the poor quality issues still
abound. I am inundated with complaints
about quality of service and the seemingly uncaring attitude of our telecoms
operators to resolve these issues on a regular basis. We will continue, through
the industry regulator, to apply sanctions when operators fail to meet the
required standards in terms of service quality breaches.
“However, consumers cannot continue to bear the burden of
poor service delivery. Though we are mindful that the operators are facing
issues in deploying or maintaining infrastructure, we believe that the
operators can do better in delivering acceptable quality of service, which they
are clearly not doing now.”
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