Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu took a hard stance on the top telecom executives including Sunil Bharti Mittal as the phones in Visakhapatnam are not working even after 5 days of the Hudhud cyclone hit the state.
Mr. Naidu's temper took a slip and he demanded “a straight answer” for the “non performance” of the telecom operators. He stated that the efficiency of the rescue operations has gone down by 50% just because of the communication gap.
“That means you are totally commercial” said the chief minister who had obviously lost his cool.
While the telcos said the services will be resume from Saturday evening, Mr. Naidu additionally asked the telcos to come up with low tariffs for the users in the cyclone hit area and also asked them to strengthen the 3G infrastructure support for the relief operations team.
Mr. Naidu went to the extent to state he will have the Telecom executives arrested if they don't get the connections restored immediately. We feel the telcos should have a disaster management unit which can spring to action immediately and try to restore connectivity. The Kashmir catastrophe was handled by the Telecos much more maturely than the HudHud.
