Also, the engagement was organised to enlighten telecom
consumers on consumer-centric initiatives put in place by the Commission, which
consumers can leverage to improve their telecom usage experience.
Speaking at the event, which took place in Keffi, Nassarawa
State, the NCC’s Director, Zonal Operations, Amina Shehu, said the engagement
was in line with NCC’s mandate to constantly educate the consumers on telecom
service-related issues bordering on improving their quality of service
experience.
Addressing the participants on behalf of Shehu, an Assistant
Director in the department, Usman Abubakar, said the Commission had developed a
series of engagement programmes to keep telecom consumers informed of
developments in the telecoms sector towards protecting consumers from any
unwholesome practices.
Participants in the sensitization programme were enlightened
on many subjects including Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) registration,
consumer complaints redress process arising from illegal deductions, illegal sales
of improperly-registered cards, among others.
According to Abubakar, the Commission had recently directed
all subscribers to ensure the integration of their SIMs with their National
Identification Numbers (NIN), otherwise, their mobile lines will be blocked.
“As a rule in Nigerian telecommunication industry today,
every mobile subscriber must register his/her SIM before activation, as there
are penalties associated with the sale and purchase of fraudulently-registered
SIM cards. We also enjoin you, as telecom consumers, not to allow another
person to use their NIN to register other people’s SIMs,” he said.
On the issue of complaints’ redress, Abubakar told the
consumers that it is their right to be satisfactorily attended to by their
service providers to resolve any service-related complaints they may have.
He, however, noted that where such complaint was not
satisfactorily resolved by their mobile network operator (MNOs), consumers
should take advantage of the NCC toll-free number 622, by dialing the number to
report such a case for necessary escalation and resolution.
Abubakar also stated that another consumer-centric
initiative of the Commission is the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) 2442 short code, which
consumers can use to manage cases of unsolicited messages on their mobile
phones.
“Millions of telecom consumers have leveraged this short
code to stop or manage cases of spam text messages on their mobile devices and
we enjoin you to also take advantage of it,” he added.
During the event, a number of consumer complaints were
addressed by the NCC team by getting the right information from the Commission
while some of the consumers were advised to contact their service providers to
resolve some specific service-related issues.
Some of the issues include the automatic migration of a
consumer from an existing data plan to another data plan without the consumer’s
consent, as well as illegal airtime or data deductions.