Unpaid telephone bills in Samoa amounting to US$13.5 million are mostly owed by government ministries and corporations.
The details of the debts were revealed in the first annual report state-owned SamoaTel has tabled in Parliament since it was created.
SamoaTel inherited the debt when it took over Post and Telecommunications as the monopoly supplier of landline telephone services in 1999.
Cabinet has written off the debt.
But the Chairman of the parliamentary select committee on communications, Levaopolo Talatonu, objected saying that
Government ministries and corporations get away with not paying millions yet a family who owe SamoaTel 20 US dollars face immediate disconnection.
