— now ‘begging’ public to come to its aid
THE GUYANA Telephone and Telegraph Company Limited (GT&T) has reported that the company suffers at least one act of vandalism on its infrastructure each day, and this is having a toll on the operations of the company, and continues to impact the rolling out of new services and upgrades. Moreover, those criminal acts have been causing the company millions of dollars in losses.
At a press conference Friday, company CEO, Yog Mahadeo disclosed that the company has recorded losses of just over US$2M in respect to acts of vandalism committed last year; and that figure does not include the revenues lost through customers’ inability to access services.
Mahadeo said that figure represents the amount the company uses to remedy the acts of vandalism, and the cost of materials and resources damaged or carted off by bandits. The CEO described vandalism as “blatant theft of the company’s resources”, including cables and copper and other infrastructure of the company.
Mahadeo said vandalism affects every facet of the company’s operations. He said delays in the rolling out of new services, effecting upgrades or maintenance works, responding to calls of glitches in the system, and other critical services are placed on hold as engineers are forced to divert their attention to repairing vandalized cables and other infrastructure of the company, which all takes time. Those delays consequently forestall upgrades and other services by as much as eight to nine months.
Mahadeo said GT&T has now gone into “BEGGING” mode, asking citizens to be its eyes and ears in protecting the company’s infrastructure. He said it is now becoming more painful and unbearable for GT&T to deal with acts of vandalism on a daily basis.
Mahadeo disclosed that vandalism has so frustrated GT&T employees that some technicians believe their core activity has been shifted. Those workers now turn up for work but, instead of wanting to know which location or area they will be conducting maintenance, upgrades, or new connections, they are now more focused on wondering where next they will have to respond to an act of vandalism.
The CEO was at pains to point out the process of repairing damaged cables. He said that whenever a ‘400’ or ‘600’ cable was vandalized, damaged or severed, it literally meant that 400 or 600 customers respectively were affected. Each cable then has to be rejoined, and this takes time.
Sometimes it results (rarely) in lines being crossed, and this adds to the confusion, since technicians are forced to return to the area, check every connection, and reconnect the right cables at the ends at which they had been severed. Each severed cable has to be repaired individually, and this is extremely time-consuming.
He said that in cases where severed cables had been taken away, it causes the company more money. GT&T then has to rejoin the ends of the severed cables by connecters, in which case it has to use 800 connections to connect one 400 cable, and 1200 connections to repair one 600 cable.
While GT&T appreciates receiving assistance of community members in some areas of the country, the sad reality is that assistance, especially from the police, comes after the company has suffered millions in losses and damage to its infrastructure.
The company currently has in the Sophia A Field area residents patrolling on lookout for vandals. For their efforts, the phone company has been providing the community with fuel for the patrol vehicle. One person has since been caught and handed over to the police.
To compensate for slothfulness of the DSL service over the past few days, the company announced that it will be offering each customer a 25% percent discount on their next DLS payment to the company. Mahadeo also added that the slothfulness of the service is being addressed. Further, that discount will cost the company almost $25M.
Several communities across the country have been listed as areas of much concern in respect to vandalism of GT&T infrastructure. While Sophia had been listed as one of the hotspots, the company has reported changed fortunes there since the community started the nightly patrols.
GT&T cautioned residents about condoning and not reporting vandalism in recent times. The company pointed out that the damage to the resources could mean life and death for residents in the event of emergency, where no phone service is available and communicating with relatives, police, fire and other key persons and agencies will be impossible because of severed cables.