People around Chiringa in the eastern of Phalombe district will now have easy access to information and communications technology (ICT) services following the opening of a telecentre in the area.
Minister of Information, Civic Education and Communications Technology, Mark Botomani, officially launched the K65 million centre on Tuesday afternoon.
In his speech at Nazombe Primary School ground, the information minister said the centre will boost agricultural economic activities in the area as people will be able to sell and buy farm inputs and produce through online.
“It’s great that this has been opened, you won’t be travelling to Phalombe boma, Mulanje and Zomba to access ICT services, you have them here. You’ll be buying things online while you are here,” he said.
Botomani further revealed that government is planning to construct tele-centres in all the 193 constituencies so as to boost ICT services in this digital era.
Member of Parliament for the area, Robert Mwina thanked government through Macra for the centre saying many of the youths in his area will be well conversant with matters to do with computers.
However, he complained to Macra about the Mozambique network intrusion as it is difficult to use network from Malawian providers since most times it goes roaming which is very expensive.
“As you stepped into this area I am sure that you’ve received a message that says Welcome to Mozambique, meaning you can’t use normal charges but roaming prices, I’ve asked Macra to look into that,” the Phalombe East constituency legislator said in an interview.
The message the legislator was referring to read: “Welcome to MOZAMBIQUE you’re now roaming with Vodacom (MOZ). Make local calls at K375/min, call home at K750, SMS K225, receive calls for K375/min and data at K1,875/MB.”
In his response to Mwina’s quarries, Macra director general Godfrey Itaye said his office will sit down with their counterpart in Mozambique to see on how they can resolve this matter.
Itaye said: “According to international standards, the protrusion of about 5 kilometres of a frequency into the country is acceptable and we will sit down and look into the matter to see the frequency they are using. They need to change the frequency so that it shouldn’t affect communication services here in Malawi.”
