SOME residents in the mining town of Bartica, Region Seven, are up in arms over what they called “poor service” by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company Limited (GTT) and they are calling on the company to effectively fix the problem.Land line services in sections of Mongrippa Hill and Fourth Avenue, Bartica have been down for approximately five months, reports indicate, with the Internet service being described as the “worse” in the country.

On Sunday, 51-year-old Anjanie Rampersaud complained bitterly about the situation. She told the Guyana Chronicle that it is five months since she was last able to receive a call on her landline phone. “I reported the matter to GTT, the technicians came, fixed it, and it worked for a couple of days and never worked back since,” said the frustrated customer.

Though she is unable to benefit from the services of GTT, in this respect, Rampersaud, who has been living at Lot 123 Mongrippa Hill, Bartica for the past 22 years, has been receiving some hefty bills.

“I don’t get to use the phone but the bills keep coming in large amounts. The last bill was $14,000,” Rampersaud posited, noting that she has taken a decision to pay only the rental for the phone until the problem is rectified.

“This is not a problem affecting me alone, all over people are complaining about their phone not working, some people they getting to receive calls but they can’t give out, GT&T got to do better,” she added.

Another resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said she has grown tired of the situation. The Fourth Avenue, Bartica resident, who has been living in the area for the past nine years, said GTT technicians would respond to reports within weeks, but when they do, the landline phone would only work for a few days before becoming dysfunctional again.

INTERNET
“The landline service is crazy, the Internet service is crazier… but I get tired of calling because is the same thing over and over again,” the woman posited.

“Imagine, in order to transfer a line from First Avenue to Fourth Avenue where we living now, we had to pay them GTT technicians $30,000 for them to move, because we calling the main office and nothing ain’t happening, now it move, we can’t send out call only receive,” she added.

Newly-elected Deputy Mayor Nageshwari Kamal Persaud bemoaned the absence of a GTT Branch Office in Bartica in light of a growing customer base there.

“We don’t have a local GTT office that customers could walk into, to pay a bill, do a transfer or even report a problem,” she told this newspaper.

The majority of the telephone bills are paid through Citizens Bank or Bill Direct Services. She is contending that due to the lack of a branch in Bartica, it takes GTT weeks and sometimes months for their technicians to respond to problems facing customers.

“Internet here is extremely slow, extremely slow, even sometimes I send SMS text messages, people don’t get those messages. Sometimes you call someone’s landline and they don’t respond to the first ring, they miss the call and it’s like that here.”

FRUSTRATING
She added: “It’s very frustrating here, many of the landlines don’t work, the Internet is extremely slow and it’s very costly to utilise these services. I don’t know what we are paying for? We demand better, we deserve better.”

The Deputy Mayor and residents alike are calling on the management of GTT to deliver a more reliable, efficient and customer-friendly service to the people of Bartica.

But GTT Public Relations Officer (PRO) Alison Parker refuted the claims, contending that there are less than three per cent recorded faults.

“At any given time there will unfortunately be customers who are out of service. There are 1200 fixed customers in Bartica and there are less than three per cent recorded faults,” Parker told Guyana Chronicle.

She added: “Whilst the onsite personnel will investigate fault reports – repair teams from Georgetown are mobilised to the area… to address faults on a fortnightly schedule with exceptions made for significant outages.”
The next team is scheduled to visit Bartica during the week of April 11.

Turning her attention to the Internet problems facing residents, the PRO said Bartica’s geographical location is a major contributing factor to the problems being encountered by subscribers.

“There are terrain-related peculiarities that negatively impact our capacity to deliver broadband to Bartica currently, and as such, existing fixed data speeds are less than we would desire, whilst mobile data is further constrained by lack of spectrum,” she explained, advising that measures will be put in place before the end of 2016 to significantly enhance the services provided in this regard.

But despite admitting that the Internet service provided to the people of Bartica is less than desirable, Parker shot down claims that GTT has been unable to live up to its ambitious goals to provide faster Internet access countrywide.

“GTT can confirm that faster Internet objectives have been achieved in 2015 in the geographic areas that were publicly stated as part of the Enhanced Broadband Project. Bartica was not identified in that batch of areas,” she said.