Why Does Econet Data and Airtime expire?

HON. BAJILA: Thank you Mr Speaker Sir, for granting me the opportunity to add my views to this motion moved by Hon. Maoneke. Allow me to begin by stating that I support the motion. The people of Zimbabwe deserve better and they deserve more. I have considered the current statistics on where we stand as a country. According to the first-quarter 2026 sector reports, we have approximately 17.3 million active SIM-card connections. This figure reflects the reality that many people, including Members of this House, hold more than one SIM card. As a result, the number of SIM-card connections can exceed the country’s population as is the case here. What is important, however, is the breakdown of these connections. Of the 17.3 million SIM cards, approximately 12.9 million are on Econet, 4.1 million are on NetOne and about 305000 are on Telecel. These figures paint a clear picture, Mr Speaker. When I read them, I was reminded of words once used by the Government Chief Whip: ‘kutonga, kudzvanyirira’. It is evident that Econet dominates this space and in many respects, sets the pace in the telecommunications sector… HON. TOGAREPI: On a point of order! Mr Speaker, Hon. Bajila should swallow his words that he is associating with the Government Chief Whip. I am not aware of when and mainly of the context in which that was said. Where exactly? Were we in a beer hall or at a soccer match. Hon. Bajila, I am enjoying your debate but do not create a situation where you attribute the Government Chief Whip to the blanket statement Kutonga kudzvanyirira. I do not own that statement. Maybe it was said somewhere else for a particular reason but not in the context the Hon. Member is putting it. I think that is a dangerous statement. He is my friend but I think this time he wants to throw me in a deep pit. HON. BAJILA: I withdraw, Mr. Speaker. THE TEMPORARY SPEAKER (HON. J. TSHUMA): Thank you very much. HON. BAJILA: Thank you Mr. Speaker. The point I want to drive home is that we must promote competitive tendencies in this particular sector. No player should have excessive dominance. The best way to do so is to increase the number of players in the sector. We must always try by all means to put ourselves in a space where we resist domination in everything we participate in. The issue of market domination is clear in the statistics that we have presented from POTRAZ where out of 17 million, one service provider has control of almost 18 million subscribers. In so doing Mr. Speaker, we also need to understand that licencing more operators does not automatically lead to more competition if we do not come up with rules that deal with practices that are anti-competitive. So, in so doing, we may need to find spaces where we can learn and do better as a country. One of the countries in our sub-region that has done very well is the island nation of Mauritius, where their ICT authority has a framework for dealing with competitive and non-competitive behaviour of operators because at times you can find a situation whereby an operator, has got a high number of subscribers and can come up with things that are even confusing to the subscribers, knowing very well that subscribers have nowhere else where they can find sanctuary. So, it is important that we learn from the market competition framework of the Republic of Mauritius and, as they say, indlela ibuzwa kwabaphambili. We have our own brothers who have done it better whom we can learn from. We can look at the size of our country, Zimbabwe. We have the same number of operators as our western neighbour, Botswana. Population-wise and in terms of the size of the country that is comprised of human settlements, we are far bigger than the Republic of Botswana. These are some of the things that we may need to look into. There are some measures which we can take to promote competition. We might need to think about introducing what is called interoperability, where I can retain my 0773 number but move with it to another service provider so that I do not lose the connection, I do not lose the people that I am already in contact with but I found a better service elsewhere and I can go there. The absence of that has kept so many of our people tied to a number and tied to a network simply because they cannot retain that number and go to a better service provider. So, we can have a framework that allows this to happen.