Cable vandals in Arusha, Tanzania, have destroyed telecommunication equipment serving State House, leaving the building and residents in the area without voice and data communication.
According to Tanzanian Telecommunications Company (TTCL), the vandals have stolen phone cables and their connectors, leaving several parts of Arusha city and its suburbs with no communications.
Apart from State House the company said a total of 41 locations were hit by theft cases, with some 2,500 clients affected by the vandalism that targeted landline telephone communications infrastructure.
Regional manager for the company Laibu Leornard said the company had continued to suffer losses amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually due to cable thefts, with 2012 figures approximated at US$586,000.
The problems facing TTCL are similar to those affecting other countries in East Africa.
Orange Kenya says cable vandals in search of copper have continued to destroy communications infrastructure worth millions of dollars.
According to Orange cable vandalism and theft remains one of the biggest obstacles to the provision of quality fixed line services and data by Telkom Kenya limited.
“The vice accounts for enormous monetary losses to TKL due to resultant disruptions in land-line and data services as well as the distress caused to its customers who are often left without these services for prolonged periods,” reads a statement on its website.
Orange puts the losses sustained as a result of cable vandalism at KSh2 billion (US$23.3 million) over the period between 2006 and 2009 or an annual loss of KSh500 million (US$5.8 million dollars) annually.
Apart from copper cable wires vandals have also targeted the fibre optic infrastructure in what has been suggested as economic sabotage between players in the sector.
As part of the remedy governments have been urged to ban the export of copper as well as impose hefty fines.
