ZAIRE-COMMUNICATIONS: Better days ahead

• by IPS Correspondents (brazzaville)
• Thursday, November 10, 1994
• Inter Press Service

Brazzaville, Nov 10 (IPS) - Zaire's telecommunications utility is to expand telex and telephone links with the outside world later this month in a bid to reduce the isolation suffered by the Central African nation.

Making the announcement on Zairean radio, monitored here, Lungele Matsafabu, Acting Director of the Zairean Post and Telecommunication Office (ONPTZ), said 150 international telephone and telex circuits would be opened from Nov. 19.

Of these, 60 would link Zaire to France, 30 to Belgium and the other 60 to the United States and South Africa.

The new circuits will ease the bottlenecks affecting Zaire's international lines, which represent about 80 percent of the earnings of ONPTZ, according to Lungele.

He added that as a result of negotiations begun since last year with "foreign partners", ONPTZ will soon obtain mini earth stations which will be installed by next year in the country's main towns, including Lumumbashi, Kisangani and Goma.

In October, ONPTZ received a 2.5-million-dollar injection from its Belgian counterpart, Belcom, Lungele said.

"Belcom has also been considering either wiping out the 750,745,980 Belgian francs (about 25 million U.S. dollars) the ONTPZ owes it or incorporating it into the debt the Republic of Zaire owes to the Kingdom of Belgium," he added.

Moreover, the Belgian bank, Belgolaise, has just approved a 3.5 million US-dollar loan to ONPTZ to help it improve its telecommunications network.

While telecommunications in Zaire appear headed for better days, not so road communications.

The Zairean Road Department reported Wednesday that funds available for road repairs shrank to 1.56 million dollars in the first nine months of the year.

It said financing for the sector had dropped from nearly 600 million dollars in 1989 to 30.65 million dollars in 1993 and, as a result, the volume of work done on the country's roads decreased by 43 percent between 1992 and 1993.

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