NCC Act forbids refund to telecom consumers – Juwah

EVC Juwah, EC Itanyi, NCC Commissioner and Allison Madueke

The Executive Vice Chairman of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Eugene Juwah has revealed why the commission may not pay any compensation to telecom subscribers in the country, saying that National Communications Act (NCA) forbids NCC from taking such a step for the interest of the industry.

This is coming as some advocacy groups, Consumers Empowerment Organization of Nigeria (CEON) and United Consumers Association of Nigeria (UCAN) have dragged the four mobile operators in the country to court under the Consumer Protection Council Act, claiming about N1.5 trillion damages for poor quality of service in recent times.

Speaking to DigitalSENSE Business News soon after the launch of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Lagos, Juwah said the NCC Act forbids such reimbursement, which is capable of destabilising the operating environment.

Although Juwah was not specific as to the part of the NCA that forbids ‘direct’ compensation to subscribers, he also said that by given refund to telecom consumers directly may likely create more problem than solution as it could lead to network congestion if all the telecom consumers were to be credited with somewhat free airtime among others.

Meanwhile the two groups, namely CEON and UCAN are claiming damages worth N1.5 trillion from the four Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication operators – Glo, MTN, Airtel and Etisalat; for the poor quality of service.

Also, they indicted Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for appropriating to itself the payment resulting from the fines on telcos, rather distributing among subscribers who they claim were directly affected by increased poor services by GSM operators.

According to CEON and UCAN, “NCC`s action as a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul” and have invoked section 8 (b) of the Consumer Protection Council Act No. 66 of 1992, which states inter alia that “the consumer shall, in addition to the redress which the State Committee, subject to the approval of the Council may impose, have a right of civil action for compensation or restitution in any competent court.”

The consumer advocacy groups had request the operators to pay each subscriber on their platform the sum of N10,000 for poor quality of service, mostly for dropped calls; break up during conversation; unconnected calls; poor connection; poor signal level to name a few.

The Coordinator-General, CEON, Mr. Babatunde Abiodun,  and his colleague at UCAN, Mr. Aduloju Abiodun, pointed out that consumers’ satisfaction remains a mirage despite the imposition of penalty for poor quality of service on the operators by NCC.

Both CEON and UCAN alleged that NCC takes joy “… in fining GSM telecoms operators at will for poor quality of service rendered to subscribers while same Commission at same time ignored accommodating compensation for the subscribers who directly suffered effects of the poor quality of service”

As said by the groups, following administrative enquiry or investigation on the general state of service quality in the telecommunications sector conducted by the Nigerian Communications Commission in 2012 and imposition of the sum of N1.17 billion fine administrative penalty by the same NCC on the four GSM operators in Nigeria, they are collaboratively claiming damage to the sum of N1.5 trillion, at the rate of N10,000 per subscriber from the four GSM operators as reimbursement to all voice and data GSM subscribers in Nigeria.

Remmy Nweke/DSBNews 
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