_____________

Various stakeholders and the government are worried about the continued vandalism of telecom equipment across the country.

While addressing officials on Monday, April 8, during the National Stakeholder Forum on Vandalism co-organised by the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) and American Tower Wireless Infrastructures Solutions (ATC) Uganda, Dr Aminah Zawedde, the permanent secretary in the ministry of ICT and national guidance, said while they have heavily invested in ICT infrastructure, they have been vandalised.

“The challenge we are facing as a country is that while rolling digital infrastructure is very important for us, the digital infrastructures on which digitalisation thrive are vandalised from time to time. 

We intend to get strategies on how to bring this to an end. We are losing a lot of money because of the vandalisation of the ICT equipment,” she said.

Dorothy Kabagambe from American Tower International remarking during the stake holder’s meeting on vandalism. (Photo by Simon Peter Tumwine)

Zawedde didn’t however mention how much money has been lost though added that many companies are losing different amounts of money to scrap dealers in their acts of vandalism.

Dorothy Kabagambe, the chief executive officer of ATC said a lot of money is being lost adding that the government should consider ICT infrastructure vandalism as economic sabotage.

“We request the government and agencies to elevate telecom infrastructure as critical because it carries the GDP of this country and the well-being of all Ugandans. We believe that enough penalty should be given to the culprits,” Kabagambe said.

She regretted that the enforcement of theft of telecom equipment is considered a petty offense yet it impacts the economy.

Denis Kakonge, the director of legal at Airtel revealed that between January last year and today, Airtel has lost sh134m ($35,000) in vandalised telecom equipment.

“We have lost over sh134m in vandalised telecom equipment alone. In this figure, we have not added up how much we lost in terms of mobile money transactions, airtime purchases, and taxes among others.

This is huge money that we are losing specifically from the scrap dealers, Kakonge said.

Allan Rwakakooko, the head of legal from UMEME noted that because of the vandalism of their towers, they have technologically decided to switch from using copper wires to aluminium that are in less demand on the market.