Consumers rue high mobile phone tariffs

Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) has described as ‘unfair’ the upward price adjustment of voice, short messaging service (SMS) and data services by Airtel Malawi plc.

The consumer rights body said this will put communication out of reach of a majority of the people.

In a statement on Friday, Malawi Stock Exchange-listed Airtel Malawi indicated that effective tomorrow, it will raise tariffs for its voice bundles services by 20 percent, but reduce by 31 percent its headline voice tariff.

The firm also indicated it will increase SMS bundles  tarrifs by 26 percent, remove SMEs bonus and increase by 20 percent MoFaya data bundles tarrifs.

But Cama executive director John Kapito said the development is worrisome for the consumers coming at a time government assured Malawians of reduced prices of mobile phone data.

He said: “One wonders why we are witnessing these price increases, especially on data.

“This is shocking to consumers who have for a long time registered their anger with the current bundle prices and one wonders how Airtel Malawi reconciles and justifies their bundle prices with an increase of 20 percent.” 

Kapito said it is disturbing that most of these companies push consumers to the edge by raising tariffs instead of improving their internal inefficiencies.

In the statement, Airtel Malawi plc justified the move, saying it is largely on the back of soaring cost of doing business following the 25 percent devaluation of the kwacha in May this year, rising energy costs and their domino effect.

Reads the statement: “It was prudent for us to revise the prices accordingly to protect Airtel’s broad stakeholder base interests as well as guard its capability to deliver quality of services to customers.”