By Mustapha Sesay
Members of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee on Information have again decried Airtel mobile company for poor services provided to customers across the country.
This is not the first time the mobile company, which is considered the biggest in Sierra Leone in terms of customer base and reach, is being criticized by committee members, parliamentarians or the general public.
An opposition Member of Parliament, Paran Tarawally, had even vowed to lead a legal suit against the company.
In Parliament on Wednesday, a member of the information committee, Jusufu Mansaray, noted that Airtel had not matched up to expectations in terms of its service delivery to the public. Making calls through Airtel network was an even bigger challenge, the MP noted.
At an earlier committee meeting in March, he had raised similar concerns about shortcomings in services provided by the company. According to MP Mansaray even President Ernest Bai Koroma had at some point expressed dissatisfaction over the quality of services provided by Airtel.
Another member of the committee, AlieKaloko, MP, described the company’s shortcomings as a deliberate ploy to cheat customers. All these complaints and allegations were made in the presence of senior staff members of Airtel who were also in parliament. They, however, could not respond to the numerous claims.
Meanwhile, Sierra Leone’s deputy minister of information, Theo Nicol, told the parliamentarians that his ministry was the highest revenue generation ministry, adding that they had made a lot of progress in getting the agencies under them to increase their performances.
© Politico 07/05/15
