Vandalising ICT infrastructure after investing billions of shillings is unacceptable and in bad faith, CA director general Francis Wangusi has sad.
Wangusi said this after NASA supporters burned a Safaricom mast after the Supreme Court upheld President Uhuru Kenyatta’s win on Monday.
The oppositions asked its supporters to boycott Safaricom products, claiming it is one of the pro-government companies that helped bungle the presidential election. Safaricom has denied the allegations.
“This worrying and dangerous trend has caused network and service outages in the affected areas putting lives of Kenyans at risk,” Wangusi said.
“Deliberate destruction of communications infrastructure under the false belief that it belongs to a particular operator is misleading.”
While addressing the media on Wednesday, Wangusi noted telecommunications services help with emergency response so they should not be destroyed.
“This malicious destruction of ICT infrastructure also threatens to erode massive investments and other gains in the sector,” he said.
Wangusi added over Sh70 billion is required to close the existing ICT gaps in Kenya. This is according to the ICT Access Gaps study carried out by the authority in 2016.
“The vandalism is therefore retrogressing all efforts, to ensure all Kenyans access communications services, and making the investment burden of facilitating universal access even more onerous,” he said.
Wangusi said mobile network operators also bear the brunt of the “sinister actions”.
