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MOGADISHU Somalia (Xinhua) --
Somalia government on Monday confirmed
the restoration of internet services in Mogadishu and
the larger south and central regions after three weeks
outage.
Minister of
Posts, Telecommunication and Technology Engineer Abdi
Anshur Hassan told journalists the 23-day outage was
caused by an undersea fibre optic cable cut.
He said a
vessel, the MSC Alice, which had brought goods to a port
in the capital Mogadishu, was responsible for the
situation.
“Finally we
have internet services back following efforts by the
government and the internet service providers,” said
Hassan.
“Joint
efforts made by the Somali government and the Internet
Service Provider (the company) brought the internet
service available again in the south and central Somalia
successfully,” he added.
The minister
urged the companies providing the fibre optic to have
backups so that they could get an alternative internet
service for their customers in case of network problem.
He said law
on the telecommunication should immediately be approved
to help give the public the right to get compensation
from companies providing the service in case of any
failure.
The minister
also called on the service providers to ensure such
disconnection does not occur again in the future.
Somalia had
announced last week it was losing an average of 10
million U.S. dollars daily owing to the outage which has
affected business and virtually all sectors of the
country’s economy.
“The average
loss of the lack of internet services is about 10
million dollars per day. We lost 130 million dollars
only in the past two weeks after missing the services
which was the lifeline of our people,” Hassan said last
week.
The internet
outage hit 11 out of 18 Somali regions including the
capital Mogadishu.
The
government said whoever was involved in this incident
will be tried and the company that belongs to the ship
that was involved in cutting the undersea cable is
required to pay for the loss.
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African Union denies
its convoy killed woman in Mogadishu
MOGADISHU Somalia (Xinhua) --
The AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) on
Sunday denied reports that its convoy killed a woman in
Albao area, about 20kms northwest of Mogadishu on July
9.
AMISOM said
the woman who was only injured by shrapnel from
improvised explosive device (IED) planted by Al-Shabaab
is recuperating in hospital.
“The woman
who was pregnant was immediately evacuated to the AMISOM
level II hospital, where she received emergency
treatment and was later transferred to a local hospital
in central Mogadishu, for further treatment,” it said in
a statement.
An AU convoy
from Albao Forward Operating Base (FOB) ran into an IED,
which exploded and seriously damaged one of its vehicles
on July 9.
“The
allegations made by Shabelle Media have been
investigated by the Civilian Casualty Tracking, Analysis
and Response Cell (CCTARC) and were found to be false,”
it said.
“Claims that
the woman had been killed by AMISOM is therefore
malicious and a deliberate move meant to cause
disaffection and damage to the reputation of the AU
Mission,” it said.
The AU
mission said it is always committed to sharing
information with the media that would help them write
factual stories and correctly inform the people.
“AMISOM
appeals to journalists to be professional and fair in
their reports and desist from misleading the public,” it
said. |
