A consumer rights lobby group, Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama), has welcomed a move by Members of Parliament who have passed a motion recommending Government to engage mobile network providers on expiry of data bundles. 

The motion was brought in the house on Thursday, by Thyolo Central lawmaker Ben Phiri, who argued that it doesn’t make sense for data bundles to be expiring while Malawians are already paying heavily on the services.

Phiri’s motion also came amid outcry from the Government, human right groups and the public that using data in Malawi is too expensive as compared to neighbouring countries.

Cama Executive Director, John Kapito, commended the move by the legislatures saying Malawians have been ripped off for a long period of time.

Kapito said: “This is something that we have been talking for a long time and now that our parliamentarians have found a way of solving this out, then we just want to encourage them to finish the mission.”

“We would wish if they simply had come out with a law that would stop them from putting expiry dates from data bundles.”

Meanwhile the Parliament has recommended that government should with immediate effect engages the service providers to stop the data expiration and also improve their services as far as network is concern.

In July this year, Minister of Information, Gospel Kaza, ordered Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra), to engage the internet service providers and look into complaints of exorbitant data charges.