the goan I network
CANACONA
Irate locals of Cotigao on Monday marched to the lone mobile tower in the village and threatened to demolish it, after claiming that there had been no network coverage in the area since the last two months.
According to villagers, the entire Cotigao village had been serviced by the lone tower erected some 12 years ago by a private telecom company and, subsequently, another private telecom company had fixed its antennas to provide the mobile network.
“However, there has been no network coverage since the last two months and we had been following up the issue with the company officials. We were told that there were payment issues between both private telecom companies, while the landowners and the panchayat have not received payments for several
months, leading to the stoppage in mobile network coverage,” said Cotigao Sarpanch Daya Gaonkar.
Locals were furious over the absence of mobile network services, stating that they had been taken back into the pre-mobile era.
“People are not in a position to contact any emergency services, including ambulances, fire services, etc. More importantly, this has led to the disruption in internet services which school/colleges children need for their assignments, besides social media networks like WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram,” said Gaonkar.
The sarpanch added that the Cotigao panchayat has been unable to provide government’s online services in the absence of this mobile network coverage since the last two months.
“People of Cotigao have suffered losses to the tune of about Rs 8 lakh due to the telecom company’s failure to restore the network. We have about 3,500-odd residents and there are about 2,000-odd SIM cards in the village. If one considers a monthly recharge of about Rs 200, people would have wasted Rs 4 lakh per month to recharge their SIM cards due to non-availability of mobile network,” explained Gaonkar. He claimed that people had lost hope in the present telecom company restoring mobile network services and had even met another telecom company.
“This private telecom company had expressed its inability to set up its services in the village and if all our efforts don’t meet the desired results to restore the network, we have decided to demolish the mobile tower,” said the sarpanch.
