A joint technical committee has been set up in Zambia to clampdown on the sale of counterfeit mobile phones that have flooded the country's telecom market.

The committee which comprises of the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS), the Zambia Information Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) MTN, Airtel and Zamtel plans to regulate the sale of imported counterfeit mobile phones on the black market.

ZABS director Manuel Mutale said that the bureau had fast-tracked the process of dealing with the sale of imported substandard cellular phones, which come under different brand names and fetching as low as K50 (R106).

He said the importation and selling of counterfeit mobile phones in the southern African country has now become a matter of urgency as it is conflicting with the provision of quality services by the mobile phone service providers.

Mutale said ZABS has identified the telecom sector as being adversely affected by the quality of handsets that subscribers were procuring from the market cheaply.

The country’s three mobile phone operators are also involved in the selling of cheap imported handsets selling as low as K50.

“We have fast-tracked the process of dealing with the sale of counterfeit mobile phones because this is now a matter of urgency as it is conflicting with the provision of quality services by the mobile service providers,” Mutale said.