Mass Disconnection Helps GT

A mass disconnection exercise embarked on by the Ghana Telecom (GT) to disconnect lines of customers who owed GT has yielded fruits as the payment rate of bills has increased significantly, the chief executive officer has said.

He said this in an interview with the Business Chronicle last Friday in Accra. "Disconnection of lines has been a practice so many years because if people don't pay, they don't enjoy the service so we disconnect them and we give the line to somebody else after a period of time", he added.

He disclosed that if customers compelled disconnection, then they must be prepared to pay for the cost of reconnection and the reconnection reflects the cost incurred in the reconnection.

Reconnection fee had gone up recently to ?60,000 for domestic, whiles that of commercial is ?100,000.

"We need to collect the debts and the only forceful method to collect our money is to disconnect those who are not paying".

The CEO held that it was very justifiable if they did not disconnect the wrong person.

He said customer reaction had been positive so far and that inflow of collection had increased tremendously. " They have appreciated that they need to pay their bills early nowadays".

Expressing his views on the company's sale of its prepaid cards, the CEO has said that Revenue from the prepaid system is increasing every month.

"We want the people to get used to it and some people even prefer to use it because it is easy to control the phone. Obviously, many people who don't have phones could borrow from their neighbours".