Aminata Phidelia Allie and Jenneh Braima
Management and staff of sports betting company, Mercury International, have expressed disappointment in Airtel, one of Sierra Leone’s telecommunications operators, whose GPRS system has been down for 3 days and affecting the betting business.
The company said it had its head office on Siaka Stevens Street crowded yesterday, Monday, February 24, with customers who hoped to be paid their monies after winning their bets.
In an interview with Politico, the managing director of Mercury, Martin Michael, said customers who won bets had to come to their head office instead of collecting their monies from outside locations where they initially bought tickets but they could not effect payments from their local centres due to Airtel’s GPRS failure.
“We had to bring all the cards from the provinces and other locations to our head office and arrange manual payments from the systems located here”, Michael said.
Another crisis caused by the failure, he said, was that they had to withhold sales of betting tickets indefinitely and that had already dropped their sales by 80 percent.
He said they were using transport cards which, he said, was frustrating the retailers “because that means that they have to come to the office every hour or so”.
“Usually, the system would go down for like fifteen to twenty minutes, but it has been three days this time around and it is affecting our business, our reputation and everything else”.
“If our sales are down by 80%”, the Mercury MD said, “that automatically means our retailers’ commission is also down by 80percent and they have been working really hard. It is not fair that a multinational and massive company like Airtel can create a problem that lasts for three days”.
He said the only reason they got from the service provider was that they (Airtel) had a major technical problem with the software and that they were working towards remedying the situation.
Michael went on to state that many customers who were glued to the matches and loved betting on them were being deprived of that opportunity, adding: “I am more concerned about our customers than the company”.
He revealed that they were currently testing newsoftware on 3G, which he hoped would remedy the GPRS situation, adding that they might start using Africell as either a primary source or a backup.
He said they were also working with the Sierra WiFi internet company through which a VPN system would soon be installed in all their local locations. The advantage of this, he said, would be that they would be able to link directly from one centre to the other even if the GPRS system went down.
Chairman of retailers, Ibrahim Kamara said they were not happy about developments in the last three days. He said they had been starved and deprived of making money as there had been no sales for days.
“Many youth depend on these Mercury machines for their living”, Kamara said.
He revealed that they were planning a peaceful march to the Airtel office on Hill Station “to register our disappointment in them if the situation is not remedied soon”. He said they had however been held back by Mercury management but “we are running out of patience”.
A customer and resident of Calaba Town, who had been paid after spending hours in the queue, expressed joy at having received his payment. Though he was disappointed that the venue of payment had to change from Walpole Street to the Head Office on Siaka Stevens Street, Kandeh Bangura described Mercury as “very reliable”.
But another customer was not happy. “I have been here since morning and I am yet to be paid my winnings”. Though he wanted to go home, Ansu Kanneh, said he could not because he came from a far distance and it would be strenuous to return without the payment.
The public relations officer at Airtel, June Rose Johnson, expressed regret at what she described as a “technical problem”, adding that she was informed by their engineers of that problem over the weekend but that had been resolved.
“Mercury is one of our valued customers and we take them very seriously,” she said, adding that they could not afford to lose them.
(C) 25 February 2014
