It is all over the local media and social networks. I even heard some people complaining in the lift early this morning lol. The Mauritian government has abruptly moved from the gov.mu domain to govmu.org since some days now. No smooth transition period. No official communiqué as far as I know. Not even on their own web sites.
Several days back, a blog reader anonymously informed me that government officers received a mail on the 24 October 2014 to inform them of the change caused due to, I quote :
“In view of serious disruption noted in mail.gov.mu, please note that your mail account will henceforth be xxx@govmu.org instead of xxx@mail.gov.mu. Your username and password remain the same.”
To sum up, if ever you need to contact a government officer, you should now mail them on abc.xyz@govmu.org instead of abc.xyz@mail.gov.mu. And all web sites previously available on xxx.gov.mu should be accessed using the new domain : xxx.govmu.org.
Why this change?
For those who do not know the REAL problem, here’s a quick explanation : The government has now purchased their own domain govmu.org, unlike the gov.mu which is registered under the private company which owns the .mu (country code top-level domain). For those who don’t know, the government has been fighting for long to acquire the ownership of this .mu but nothing has been successful till now.
Before ending, please read this blog post written by GeekScribes. His explanation about this change and the impacts are clear and straight-forward. For instance, did you realise that all business cards and letter heads are all good for the bins?
Mauritius, c’est un plaisir!
Yashvinblogs 
Thanks for the linkback to my site Yashvin! 😀
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My pleasure 🙂
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According to Wikipedia, this might be the reason as well : “In 2009, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between Yann Kwok, owner of Internet Direct, and the Government of Mauritius. Internet Direct Limited had agreed to co-operate with the Government of Mauritius. In 2012, the agreement was not renewed by the Ministry of IT. In July 2013, Mr Yann Kwok stated that Internet Direct Limited would no longer offer its services to the Government of Mauritius because the latter has not paid for the domain name registrations and renewals. The National Computer Board of Mauritius refused to pay because they claim that this domain belongs to the Government and should thus be free. Source : http://business.mega.mu/2013/07/29/internet-210-government-websites-threatened/.”
I am not sure, maybe someone can confirm whether this is true.
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I tried this new address www://govmu.org and was redirected to the government site at www://gov.mu. Is the change only for email addresses?
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Their strategies are so…. unpredictable 😛
Yesterday, someone from France told me that gov.mu was working correctly.
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It’s still working today too even with non MT DNS servers… No idea what they’re doing.
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Gov (dash) gov (dot) mu – Sa ki vrai address la
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Read the URL in the address bar
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Camarade Ramesh ine fer erreur.
Gov dash mu dot org sa ki vrai address. Mo confirmer ki sa ki p marcher Dan’s leurop.
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Mo pa konn pu dan l’Erop, me isi dan Moris gov.mu mars san problem. Pu mwa antuka.
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Mo penser ki zot ine prend ene decision trop vite pu change zot domain et le fait ki zot pas ine communique r public, sa ine donne ene movais impression. Peut etre now, everything is back to normal we never know.
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Gov dash mu dot org
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It means that if I have to send a mail to a gov.mu address it will now be @mail.gov-mu.org?
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Nops. According to the official communiqué I was informed of, I quote :
“In view of serious disruption noted in mail.gov.mu, please note that your mail account will henceforth be*xxx@govmu.org * instead of xxx@mail.gov.mu. “
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Zote scripts manipule laddress ki parent Dan’s ou address bar. Pas conner si legal zote masquer address. Bizin report zote google Pou phising.
Gov dash mu dot org – Sa ki vrai address la.
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google pa run internet. et couma gouvernement moris pa vanne narien lor so site, li pa care si li perdi so ranking lor google. li pa tracas google. c’est google plitot ki bizin tracas gov mu acoz dimoune pou rode sa site la lor google et pa pou trouve li.
BTW, gov.mu back online. vendredi mo ti pe gagne ene 500 server error.
very poor handling of this domain en tou cas. si mo ti proprietaire sa domain gov.mu, mo pa ti pou laisse gov pa paie moi pendant 10 ans. si couma zot pa payer apres premier l’annee, mo ti pou coupe zot dessuite.
mais gov ti capav choisir banne lezot nom couma mauritius.mu, mu.mu, mugov.mu, portal.mu, etc. servi impe l’imagination.
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Fausse laddress – vrai la c http://gov-mu.org Fer ou recherche avant critique gouvernman.
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Wei. Sanela marcher!!! Gov dash mu dot org
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@Ramesh Sankur @rama de congoma
looks like you guys are either government officials or replying on their behalf. Is it the first time you are using disqus because the only comments on your profiles contain only those related to this post.
Personally, I think the ICT Minister & official that were working on this issue have failed in their job. You cannot simply come and claimed that gov.mu should be yours when you do not owned .mu. They should have settled their bills which amounted to a few hundreds thousands rather than maintaining their false ego. In the end, it is the government of Mauritius and population in general that had to pay for the consequences. Do people even realise that how much this change will cost…short answer “a lot more than the bills to Internet Direct”.
That said, I would like to bring to the attention, that I am not defending nor on its side “Internet Direct” but rather being reasonable and practical given the current parameters.
People should do a little research on who is “Yann Kwok”…To be brief, this guy is an expert on computer network/ DNS who made his way into the ICANN/AFRINIC board and obtained the trustee/responsibilty for ccTLD manager for .mu in the early 1990s. Being the sole “owner” for .mu, he is somehow responsible for the slow emergence of .mu sites due to is known over-expensive cost…I know a lot of site which had to shut down due to this maintenance cost. Until ICANN decides otherwise, the ccTLD remains to Internet Direct…and remember that Yann Kwok has more influence on ICANN than the government of Mauritius
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