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Peter Tanyanyiwa Correspondent

Millions of people in Zimbabwe and billions more across the globe were yesterday left stranded when several social media platforms, including the very popular WhatsApp and Facebook crashed after technical challenges outside the country.

The majority of Zimbabweans use WhatsApp and Facebook for social networking and to transact business running into millions of dollars on a daily basis.

The Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (Potraz) last night said the crashing of social media platforms was beyond its control as it was a global problem.

Potraz director-general Dr Gift Machengete said that they were fully aware of the problem and their engineers were working to restore communications.

“We have learned that social media platforms have crashed, however Zimbabweans must know that this is a global problem and not confined to us only.

“Our engineers are working tirelessly to restore communications,” said Dr Machengete.

Social media platforms which include Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp stopped working late yesterday afternoon and services had not been restored in the evening.

The applications, which are all owned by social media behemoth,Facebook and run on shared infrastructure, temporarily went offline across the globe.

Facebook, issued a statement saying it was working on restoring its services.

Facebook has nearly three billion accounts while Instagram has more than 1,3 billion.

In a statement on Twitter, Facebook said: “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products.

“We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologise for any inconvenience.

WhatsApp said: “We’re aware that some people are experiencing issues with WhatsApp at the moment.”