At the just concluded two-day public hearing on Communications by a
Senate Committee in Abuja, with a call by ICT Publishers Alliance for the institutionalization
of telecommunications infrastructure as critical national resource.
Chairman of the group,
Mr. Aaron Ukodie, said telecom services should be considered as strategic national
services so as to free it from the debilitating effect of multiple taxation and
regulation from various government agencies at the three tiers of government.
He said that the Alliance in a 24-page presentation to the Senate
Committee on Communications public hearing, on problems associated with quality
of service in mobile phone operations in Nigeria and co-location, stated that
The Committee chaired by Gilbert Nnaji, he said, held the session for two
days and took both oral and paper presentations from stakeholders in the
telecom industry.
The perception today
among different strata of government, the group noted, is that telecom
operators are cash-cows therefore should be milked to no end such that taxations
at even council levels are notoriously and arbitrarily imposed in such a way as
to make continuous or seamless service delivery impossible.
Mr. Ukodie pointed out
that this year alone, the NCC has had to intervene in several locations where
telecom infrastructure like base stations were shut by council officials
enforcing compliance with imposed taxes by local councils.
“Although cases of
multiple regulation and taxation may not be limited to Nigeria alone; our
position is that Nigeria can eliminate such cases and become an example to other
countries and regions,” he declared in a press statement made available to
ITRealms.
According to the group,
it is the responsibility of lawmakers, as the repository of the people's
destinies, to ensure that laws made do not run counter to the needs, desires
and social wellbeing of the people they represent.
Therefore, the Alliance noted
that a situation where every agency of government taxes telecom just because
they see the industry as the cash-cow, does not and will not augur well for the
fledgling telecom industry.
“All of a sudden, for
instance, every state government, every local government, and every community
has become a law maker unto themselves, churning out one law after another
nearly every month or quarter of the year, all targeted at milking telecom
operators,” he decried.
The group emphasised
that the National Assembly is required to put all these in check, if the
telecom industry, especially mobile operators are to continuously grow and deliver
quality services to the people.
Maintaining that the
recent gazetting of the Quality of Service Regulations by the Federal Ministry
of Justice is a right step in the right direction to strengthen the NCC to take
some severe measures when service providers are found wanting and that the NCC
must also sustain its efforts in the engagement of Drive-Test contractors to
carry out continuous quality of service drive-testing in the six geo-political
zones and Lagos.
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