Dear Editor,

This letter is in response to leftist letter writer P Chin who wrote on Thursday, July 13 in an article entitled, “Talk ain’t cheap “ that there is an attempt to link Audley Shaw’s data roaming bill to the former junior minister of foreign affairs’ voice call phone bill. In no way I’m trying to defend Mr Shaw because I do believe his bill is too high, but this could’ve happened to anyone. Here are the facts of Shaw’s situation as I know them:

1. The majority of the $8.3 million went towards data service cost, not voice calls.

2. His data roaming plan was always on.

3. The data limit was taken off his phone.

4. The explanation for the months of August —$1.5 million — and October — $4.2 million was that he travelled overseas due to health reasons with his wife, plus he travelled on IMF business to Europe.

5. Not once were these bills brought to him. According to Shaw if he had known, he would’ve made the necessary changes.

6. $2.5 milion was paid personally by him.

7. Over $1 million was settled by the telecoms provider.

8. Government in total paid $4.8 million.

9. The 65-year-old accepted responsibility for not being technologically savvy.

10. Mr Shaw’s explanation for the reason the Government had to pay $4.8 million is that he was on government business. Hello, ‘Man-A-Yaad’, it was your lack of knowledge technology-wise; not the fault of government.

No doubt, the system broke down in the Ministry of Finance and Planning, therefore one may speculate that the finance minister had no confidence in acting financial secretary Everton McFarlane whose contract was not renewed on May 31.

Here are a few instances of private citizens and politicians whose phone bills skyrocketed due to data roaming. In some cases, some hardly used their data plan but telephone providers said they had apps running in the background, which accounted for the data plans finishing so fast.

On September 13, 2013, the Daily Mail in the UK published an article entitled, “Mother, 40, hit with £20,000 mobile phone bill after using the Internet in Turkey to put her holiday pictures on Facebook”.

The impact of data

Trinidad Express published an article on May 16, 2017 entitled, ‘I can explain — Shamfa confirms $59,000 phone bill’.

It said: “Tourism Minister Shamfa Cudjoe on Tuesday confirmed the four-day $59,000 phone bill, with an explanation that only $1,100 of the bill represented actual calls. The rest were roaming fees and VAT.”

Similarly, CBC News published an article on September 15, 2015 entitled, ‘Thomas Lukaszuk apologises for $20K cellphone bill’.

According to the article, “Alberta PC leadership candidate Thomas Lukaszuk says he’s sorry he didn’t check into the details of his data plan, but is defending a $20,000 cellphone bill that taxpayers footed while he was on a private trip.

“The bill, which was for overseas data and roaming charges, was incurred while Lukaszuk was in Poland and Israel in October 2012.“

Given the foregoing, I strongly believe Senator Saphire Longmore when she said Audley Shaw is a victim. I believe the conversation we should be having now should see the Government of Jamaica lobbying the US government and other governments around the world to rein in their telecommunication providers.

It is instructive to note that on June 15 the EU banned all roaming charges.

Below is a table published in the Telegraph on April 14, 2014 that compares data roaming charges in five countries and the EU.

Teddylee Gray

Ocho Rios, St Ann

teddylee.gray@gmail.com