Zimbabwe: Minister of Communications and Technology pull up your socks.

I have been reliably informed that Telone, the communications backbone of Zimbabwe might be cut off from the rest of the world if Nelson Chamisa, the Minister of Communications and Technology does not act fast. Annual subscription fees to AfriNIC, the internet governing body responsible for allocating IP addresses in Africa still haven't been paid. Annual subscription fees to Intelsat, Teleglobe, Equant and SAIX which provide Zimbabwe with uplinks for their internet traffic to and from other countries haven't been paid. As we speak Intelsat, Teleglobe and Equant have disconnected Zimbabwe for non-payment and the only internet link left to connect Telone to the outside world is the unreliable terrestial link SAIX that goes through South Africa but its annual subscription fee also hasn't been paid so it can be disconnected anytime if the fees are not paid up soon. This SAIX link is unreliable because it is always going down due to physical layer problems on the optical fibre, or transmission problems or no diesel to run generators that feed some of the transmission repeaters along the link. So now Zimbabwe is depending on this one unreliable link SAIX whose annual subscription fee is not paid to push all its internet traffic and the bandwidth of this link is not enough to carry such a large volume of traffic so it is bound to be overloaded and significantly slow down the internet speed in the country. If SAIX authorities decide to disconnect us for non-payment there will be no internet in Zimbabwe, we will be disconnected from the rest of the world. Not only have the internet subscription fees not been paid up but the payment of the voice network interconnection fees are in arrears. If not paid soon and those countries involved in the voice interconnection decide to disconnect us there will be no voice traffic between Zimbabwe and those countries. With internet and voice communication to and from Zimbabwe disconnected, Zimbabwe, will then become an inaccessible island in terms of telecommunications. Telone management if asked by customers are saying that they have now paid up and I don't know how far true that is because surely if they have now paid those three internet uplinks that are disconnected would have been connected by now. So it probably is a cover-up statement.

My reliable source said I am not supposed to write about these problems or tell Telone customers this truth, those are the orders from Telone bosses, but I am doing it because I refuse to be part to hiding the mismanagement of an essential service and besides God doesn't want me to lie and keeping quiet while something is going wrong is just as good as lying. I am making all this come out in the open because I think doing so will make the responsible authorities act quickly as well as prevent similar issues from happenning again.

It has been almost a month since Nelson Chamisa was sworn in as the Minister of Communications and Technology and by now we expect him to have made in-roads torwards the improvement of the telecommunications industry or at least made a tour of all the Telone telecommunications exchange control rooms so that he familiarises himself with how the company operates but he hasn't done that. If he had done that he would have been informed that Telone has bills that are red in arrears and by now he would have sorted that problem. The word that is out among Zimbabweans at the
moment is that Nelson Chamisa is very good at talking as an opposition member and very weak when it comes to walking the talk. Residents of Kuwadzana which is the area were he contested in the parliamentary elections and won, testify that they only see him running around trying to win votes when it is during election campaigning and after that he disappears from the Kuwadzana map and doesn't do anything to improve the life of Kuwadzana residents. If this inaction attitude is the one he is going to employ in running the Minstry that he is in charge of then the telecommunications industry is going to further decay. Please don't get me wrong, I have got nothing against Nelson Chamisa and I prefer to have him running the Communications and Technology ministry than having Shamu do it, am only
stating this because I want him to change his inaction attitude and be seen to be working torwards the rebuilding of the telecommunications industry instead of staying in the shadows doing nothing significant. Gone are the days when I will keep quiet when I see a Minister acting incompetently, it is that keeping quiet that has brought Zimbabwe this far in the doldrums, we kept quiet while Zanu PF Ministers did whatever they wanted with our country and I don't intend to repeat the same mistake again.

The fact that he was wrangling with Shamhu, the Minister of Information, over the running of the communications companies is no excuse for him to sit on his laurels yet the handover and takeover of these communications companies was done to him by the previous Minister. Telone and Netone all prefer to have Chamisa as their Minister instead of a Minister who is a member of Zanu PF because they are afraid that if they have a Minister who is a member of Zanu PF, money from the companies will be siphoned into Zanu PF projects or embezzeled into the Zanu PF Ministers pockets or the companies will simply be mismanaged such that instead of developing they will actually sink to oblivion. Zimbabweans have seen how Zanu PF Ministers ran down the country with corruption and incompetence for the past 28years and are hoping that MDC Ministers will be different.

Let me conclude this article by advising Nelson Chamisa to pull up his socks and start acting competently torwards the rebuilding and development of the Telecommunications sector. He could start by dissolving the Telone and Netone
boards which are full of Zanu PF political appointees who are not business minded at all. He can then appoint new board members who know how to run these companies profitably, professionally and ethically. Last but not least he should ensure that the employees of these telecommunications companies are all paid market salaries so that they become motivated to increase their work output and make Zimbabwe's telecommunications system conducive to foreign direct investments. Zimbabweans expect every Ministry that is headed by an MDC member to generally improve
drastically in terms of development and employee satisfaction, please Chamisa become active in your Ministry and don't let the people down.