Russian media: failures in Syrian mobile networks blamed on Assad’s government corruption
On Tuesday, April 14, customers of the mobile operator SyriaTel lost cellular communications and the Internet. This may be due to the power outages in the country, which the media attribute to the corrupt activities of Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis. According to the Russian news agency FAN, there was no cellular service from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Wednesday in several regions of Syria, such as Latakia, Damascus, Homs and Daraa. The company's Facebook account apologized to customers for "technical problems." In response, hundreds of subscribers complained that they could not reach the technical support, and also demanded compensation for lack of service. There is now only a number of major Syrian cities which have mobile network coverage.
Syrians have reason to complain. The normal life and earnings of millions of people in the country depend on the stability of SyriaTel, which belongs to the cousin of Bashar al-Assad, Rami Makhlouf. Experts believe that the service disruption was the result of power outages and a sharp reduction in power supply by the Syrian Ministry of Energy. The official reason for the decline in the volume of power supplied is the halt in natural gas production at the Haiyan and Al-Shaer fields.
At the same time, according to the media, the cause of the power outages was corruption. After the Syrian government, led by Imad Khamis, renegotiated energy contracts with Lebanon in 2019, the amount of electricity supplied to Syria has been reduced.