Frankline Sunday A man has sued mobile network operator Safaricom for outages on the M-Pesa network.
In a class-action suit filed last week at the High Court in Nairobi, Martin Muiruri issuing the telco on
his behalf and other registered M-Pesa customers for incessant downtimes in the popular mobile money transfer service. The lawsuit also cites the Communication Authority (CA) and the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) as the second and third respondents respectively. It accuses Safaricom of failing to process all M-Pesa transactions in a timely, continuous and uninterrupted manner as per its terms of service.
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“On diverse dates in April and July 2017 and also on 2nd December 12, 2018, 9th December 2018 and 10th December 2018, the 1st defendant’s M-Pesa mobile transfer service experienced outages that lasted over eight hours particulars of which are in the knowledge of the first and second and third defendants,” says Mr Murirui in court papers seen by The Standard in part. The lawsuit also argues that while Safaricom sent subscribers text messages during the disruptions, the explanation given was not sufficient. “As a result of the willful default and/or negligence of the first defendant to maintain and upgrade its M-Pesa system/services to the international communication standards, the plaintiff and all M-Pesa customers in Kenya and abroad were unable to pay for goods and services or in any way freely transact with the M-Pesa platform as envisaged in the terms and conditions of M-Pesa users agreement,” says the applicant. Muiruri further points out that he filed a complaint with the CBK and CA in December last year, but the regulators did not respond. CA requires telecommunication mobile operators to maintain uptimes of 99.99 per cent service provision on their networks with redundancy provisions. SEE ALSO :Younger wife wins big in a 25-year old succession battle
Failure to meet this can attract fines of between Sh500,000 and 0.2 per cent of operator's gross turnover in fines, a decision the regulator waived.
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