7,400 telephone links remain cut in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Monday, 28 July 2008, 04:04 GMT]
Sri Lanka Telecommunication (SLTC) Jaffna office announced that the Ministry of Defence in Colombo has to make the final decision on the applications of 400 customers in Jaffna peninsula who had obtained the newly demanded police clearance to use their Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) wireless phones that remain suspended for the last two months on instructions of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) in Jaffna due to 'security reasons'.

SLTC in Jaffna had suspended all CDMA wireless phone service to nearly 7,000 customers as per instructions by SLA in Jaffna due to security reasons.

The fresh applications of the 400 customers who had obtained the police clearance from their local police authorities will be sent to Palaali SLA Head Office first for scrutiny and then forwarded to Defence Ministry for final approval, SLTC Jaffna officials said.

The 7000 CDMA customers whose phone connections were suspended had to first obtain the recommendation of their area Village Officers (Grama Sevakas) and the Divisional Secretaries.

These applications were then forwarded through Jaffna Government Agent (GA) to Palaali SLA head office for final approval.

The 400 customers of the above 7000 who were able to obtain the police clearance on fresh instructions of the Jaffna SLTC office now have to wait for the approval of the Ministry of Defence in Colombo to have their CDMA phone connections reactivated.