Airtel Money is the most popular mobile transfer service in Sierra Leone
By Mohamed T Massaquoi
Residents in the southern district headquarter town of Pujehun have complained that voice calls and data services of Airtel completely collapsed for the last two days, blaming one of the country's leading telecoms companies of poor service delivery.
The service provider is one of only two mobile phone operators in that part of the country, and many people rely on it for their business transactions.
Those who said they were seriously affected by the drop in signal included the Town Chief of Fonikoh Village, Mustapha Kalley. He said he could not access money sent to him via the Airtel Money transfer service.
The chief told Politico that he had travelled on Tuesday morning to cash out some money for urgent matters but that he was told there was no network.
“I am going go find it very difficult to feed my family today as that was my only source of money at this particular moment,” the chief lamented.
According to Mohammed Kaikai, another subscriber, the network breakage had become a routine for Airtel.
“This poor network has been a normal occurrence with Airtel mobile company and our state authorities are doing absolutely nothing to address the situation,” he complained, adding that that did not fit a 21st century country.
According to a reliable source within the Airtel Company in Pujehun, the break in network transmission was a result of fuel shortage. The source said their generator had run out of fuel and that because procurement was never done in Pujehun it had become difficult to speed up the process of refilling.
That could not appease Kaikai who refused to accept it as an excuse.
“Fuel should not be an excuse to a break in mobile network,” he said, insisting that it should rather be attributed to “poor management.”
The Airtel head office in Freetown only got to learn about the situation after being contacted by Politico.
Samuela Cole, a public relations officer, said they were looking into the situation and promised that by 6 pm on Tuesday the situation would have been rectified.
The glitch means many businesses suffered losses. The management of the sports-betting company, Mercury International had to switch services to the rival operator, Africell sometime last year following repeated interruptions. Mercury gamblers use mobile phones to send in their bets.
(C) Politico 10/02/16
