by crossriverwatch admin
Globacom Nigeria Limited has disclosed that all the casualties from the disaster caused by the company mast in Odukpani LGA, Cross River State on the 19th of March 2014, have been fully compensated.
Mr. Ibiso Iyama of the sales department, made this known in Calabar in a recent town hall meeting put together by the Nigeria Communication Commission, NCC with all telecommunication service providers in the state.
Against the background of the accusation of improper environmental impact assessment of their mast sites, Mr. Ibiso maintained that the Odukpani mast site is over 10 years old and it met the NCC regulatory standard while lamenting that the state government is charging them too much to site masts.
His word: “The state government is charging us 1.3 million naira to put up a new site. Glo has about 190 sites. 1.3 million times 190 is what they expect us to pay to town planning. 1 million naira for town planning, 100,000 Naira for site analysis, and 200,000 Naira for environmental impact analysis, EIA. We’ve pleaded severally alongside our competitor MTN but to no avail”.
He described the charges as “Sabotaging the effort of the business. It’s the highest in Nigeria today”, Iyama said.
Responding to the Glo sales man’s claims, the Special Adviser to the state governor, Senator Liyel Imoke,
Mr. Odo Effiong said, “The mast was built on a dump site, in order words it was built where it should not have been built, as a result of that the mast fell and killed two innocent people”.
Continuing, he said, “When we discovered it was a Glo mast, we tried getting in touch with the officer in
charge of the local office here but the person showed no concern, when we called his interest was, ‘how did you get my number’, thank God NCC came into it and we had a meeting with them and hopefully we had their cooperation.
“The official charge for a structural approval by town planning is 1 million Naira and the 200,000 Naira is a fee for the quantity surveyor you don’t pay to the government, if you have been paying it to any government agency, you should desist from doing so”.
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