Communications Minister, Samuel Nartey George, has identified battery theft and electricity-related problems as some of the reasons network sites in rural communities stop functioning.

He said the ministry had received reports of sites becoming inactive, only for investigations to reveal stolen or tampered-with batteries, prepaid electricity problems or faulty connections involving prepaid meters.

“One of the key challenges we’ve noticed in some of the reports we’ve gotten have been the issue of theft of our batteries. And that’s why you realise that across the communities, we’ve made a request to the traditional authorities and the youth of the community to protect the batteries because if the batteries get stolen, the site goes off,” he told journalists.

George explained that when Members of Parliament report network failures, the ministry dispatches teams to investigate the causes.

“Sometimes you get reports that MPs come to me and say that the site is not working. We dispatch a team to go and investigate,” he said, citing electricity supply and battery tampering among the problems uncovered.

He appealed to traditional authorities and young people in the communities to help protect the infrastructure, while urging district-level authorities to pay attention to the challenges affecting the sites.

The minister gave the explanation during an inspection of network facilities in the Central Afram Plains, where the government is assessing the condition and performance of inherited sites.