The government controlled mobile phone network service provider NetOne is illegally, during the night, constructing base stations in the middle of the road at senior army officials’ houses, the Harare city council has complained.
Mobile phone network companies are required to apply for permission to erect their base stations from the local authority which would inspect the area before giving them the go ahead.
But Harare city council’s land development manager, Booker Masasi, said only private owned Telecommunication companies were complying with these by-laws.
“I do not want to mention names but it would appear that the private ones are more compliant than the one that has an affiliation to government,” he said.
Masasi said at one point they tried to stop the company from erecting a base station along Borrowdale road and the “chief executive officer of that company passed through in his Mercedes Benz smiling at his boys urging them to continue”.
“Residents in Greystone Park, Hoggard Hill and lots of other areas are complaining and I have had numerous correspondences with the company to say that your base stations are infringing on other people’s rights but they still continued.
“One of these base stations is at an Army general’s house,” he said.