About 2,500 telephone lines employed to commit international call crimes against the state have been detected by the Ministry of Communications,.
The Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu, explained that as of last Sunday, May 16 this year, the government had identified the lines that are used to trick incoming international calls to appear as local numbers, saying “government is going to work on the identified lines to track down those criminals.”
The re-routing of international calls through local lines helps criminals avoid paying charges on international call tariffs to government.
Government has estimated that the country loses more than US$6 million monthly through the activities of unidentified persons who engage in the practice.
Mr. Iddrisu said it was in view of these activities that government has procured national gateway monitoring equipment to know all international calls that are coming in and going out.
The move is expected to help government halt the incessant revenue leakage and generate an estimated US$50 million annually.The equipment will also help the operators obtain reliable information to track interconnectivity charges from foreign operators.
He however allayed public fears that the equipment will be employed to monitor individual calls.
“I want people to know that government has no intention of monitoring and interfering in the private communications of Ghanaians,” he said.
Per their practice, those ‘unidentified’ persons (criminals) rely on the use of a Simbox or GSM gateway card, whereby the incoming call is first routed to a local number and then the same call is re-directed from the local number to the number the foreign call was originally meant for.
The amount of revenue loss, according to the minister, was only for the month of March and the expectation is that from that time till now it would be much more.
The practice has persisted for some time; however, the comment from the minister has heightened the deep-seated problems inherent in the mobilisation of revenue loss to the state. But has also opened the debate as to whether or not the cards should be registered so the mobile companies can track down criminal elements that use the numbers to perpetuate fraud on people.
The minster has directed the regulator to charge a uniform levy of US$0.19 on all the mobile networks, being unhappy about the negative effect the practice continues to have on the country’s effort to generate substantial revenue to boost development.
SOURCE: B&FT
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment