Government urged to speed up VOIP installation

Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
THE Government has been urged to speed up and fund the installation of internet based telephones in Ministries and offices to curb its ballooning telephone bill.
The voice over internet protocol (voip) has already been launched and is being implemented in partnership with TelOne.

Presenting its budgetary requirement for 2019, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Information Communication Technology and Courier Services said: “To arrest the issue of the phone bills among Ministries and Government departments, 100 percent funding of the VOIP project will seriously reduce the communications bill. The goal is to provide intranet for Government as well as a communication platform which will drastically reduce the cost of communication between ministries and Government agencies.”

The legislators recommended that there be role clarity on the running of major national projects such as the National Data Centre and the VOIP project.

“These two key national projects, which were being handled by the Ministry of Information Communication Technology and Courier Services, will henceforth be administered from OPC. The Ministry of ICT and Courier Services was involved in the groundwork of these major projects and strongly feel that they ought to see through the projects to completion. The moving of these projects to OPC was deemed to be unnecessary as the Ministry strongly felt that it should be the driver of all ICT projects within Government,” said the committee.

The legislators implored Treasury to timeously disburse financial resources to the Ministry for smooth running of its operations.

For the 2019 National budget, the Ministry placed a bid of $29,945,000 and Treasury appropriated $29,912,000.

“This translates to Treasury honouring 99.99 percent of the submitted bid. This was well received by the Ministry as they play a critical role in economic transformation.

However, the revised budget allocation from the Consolidated Revenue Fund became $17,912,000 after $12 million, which had been allocated for the National Data Centre ($4 million) and VOIP project ($8 million), was moved to the Office of the President and Cabinet (OPC),” read the report.

The committee also recommended that the Telecel issue be brought to finality.“This issue pertaining to the acquisition of Telecel by Government remains unresolved.

“In light of Government’s objective to privatise NetOne and Telecel as well as partially privatise TelOne and ZARNet, it is in the hope of having these entities to be run more profitably will less strain on the fiscus,” read the report. They also recommended that partial privatisation as well as privatisation of the targeted entities be done within the set time. – @AuxiliaK

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