CAMP COURTNEY, OKINAWA, Japan --
Government cell phones are provided to government employees in positions where they need to be contacted by just the push of a button.
These phones are provided to personnel for official government work related use only. The G-6 section provides cell phones to personnel based on their position in the work place rather than their rank.
"Common positions are operations chief, officer in charge, commanding general and deputy commanding general. Mainly O-6 and above or key billets," said Master Gunnery Sgt. Willie Davis, Camp Courtney G-6 communications chief, III Marine Expeditionary Force.
"Individual G sections are required to turn in recommendations for issued cell phones for their critical billets to their section G-6," said Davis.
Recently users have not been using the phones for just official business. They have been using their provided cell phone to call others when a land line was available. When they do this they are charged with off network charges, said Lt. Col. Brad Tenney, Camp Courtney G-6 deputy, III MEF.
"Since cell phone users are not using these cell phones properly, there has been a 143 percent increase in the government cell phone bill from the 2009 fiscal year to the 2010 fiscal year," he said.
In order to prevent this excessively high cell phone bills in the future, a new policy has been constructed and is currently in effect.
Tenney, Davis and other members of G-6 came together and created Blackberry and Cell Phone Policy 7-10. It was signed and put into effect May 14.
The policy covers everything from the official use of the cell phones to the repercussions the individual and chain of command will suffer if the cell phones are used for unofficial business.
The policy states if the cell phone user violates the policy after they have signed it, the user will reimburse the government for personal/unofficial phone calls and the individual's section will have to forfeit an appropriate amount of their Temporary Additional Duty budget in order to pay for unprogrammed costs/overages.
"Use the cell phone for official purposes only and treat it as if you are going to be paying for the bill yourself," Tenney stresses.