Zanzibar`s fibre backbone network at risk

A picture shows the fiber and a steel cable exposed due to failure by the contractor to lay them under the trench, making them vulnerable to various risks.

Zanzibar’s much awaited e-government fibre optic backbone was left in disarray following sub-standard work by Chinese contractors which resulted in the high-technology cable being cut in numerous places.

Costly repair has since been undertaken by “last mile” contractors in order to rescue the network after they discovered it had been rendered inoperative as a result of shoddy work.

New revelations have shown that the cable was buried just 30cm below the surface in some cases and significantly less than the recognised international industry standard of between 1 metre and 1.2 metres for normal soil and 60cm for rocky areas.

As a result, the line was cut in multiple places when water companies and other utilities undertook maintenance work on their own services.
“I saw cable just cross the field, without trench protection. We don’t know who did it. But I feel it is really a problem!” said one villager from Konde in Pemba.

“International standards have been set out for a reason, and breaching them is not acceptable. The lamentable catalogue of errors in Zanzibar demonstrates the far-reaching consequences of such failure, both to service users and the public coffers, we urge the concern parties to take actions to fix this fibre problem immediately.

And this kind of issue should never happen again in Zanzibar.” said Mr Mohammed Juma Amour, former Chairman of Technical Committee of Zanzibar e-Government department.

The news comes in just 18 months after the e-government fibre optic backbone project was carried out by Chinese telecoms company ZTE Corporation on the main islands of Unguja and Pemba.

In addition to allegations of the use of cheap, below-spec fibre, and cheap labour, trenching was also undertaken just a few metres from the edge of many roads, leaving little scope for future highway expansion or building construction plans.

Site inspections also reveal crooked trench lines, poor or non-existent back-filling, and hazardous open ditches without warning cordon tape, said the whistle-blower.

The problems came to light when contractors started connecting the fibre optic backbone on the “last mile” to 84 government ministries and departments, as agreed under the Zanzibar Terrestrial and Submarine Fiber Network signed in February 2013 by the Zanzibar government and telecommunications service provider Zantel to roll out final connections.

That project covered more than 39km of cabling covering Stone Town, Mazizini, Gulioni, Mtoni,Beit-el-Ras, Mkokotoni on Unguja Island and Chake Chake, Machomane and Wete on Pemba and has now been completed.

But as contractors set to work, they discovered that vast lengths of the existing backbone network were damaged, critical alarm systems were missing, fire protection requirements had gone unheeded, and fibre optic standards had been ignored.

The last mile contractors undertook the rectification work, at an additional cost to the public purse.

The controversy echoes a surveillance project built by China ZTE Corporation in Nigeria in 2012. It was reported that an innocent man was badly injured and had his right eye got fully blinded due to a big blast from the panel used for charging the battery, the components were all provided by ZTE.

The Zanzibar revelations came as a particularly savage blow in the light of the high expectations placed on the project at its inception, which carried promises of high-speed e-education, e-health and e-government platforms that would revolutionise the islands and were being watched closely as a model for Tanzania’s wider National information and Communication Technology Broadband Backbone (NICTBB) Project in the near further.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN