Company working to formulate anti-sabotage strategy

GTT cable sabotage

Chief Executive Officer of the Guyana Telephone Telegraph Company (GTT), Justin Nedd, said that the telecommunication giant is working with the Public Security, Telecommunication, and Business Ministers to formulate a strategy to mitigate the further acts of sabotage against its infrastructure.
“We are in constant contact with the Ministers of Business, Public Security and Telecommunications, and we are working on a strategy to mitigate the risks of these saboteurs trying to take down our infrastructure and affecting our customers. We have to continue work to take down these rogue elements,” Nedd said.
“We do have security alarms that are triggered once the cable is cut, so we continuously patrol; but, as you know, Guyana is vast and we are not able to be everywhere at once. But once the cable is cut, we deploy; we try to fix it,” Nedd added.
On September 12 and 13, three hundred (300) metres of cable in the vicinity of New Hope and Friendship, on the East Bank of Demerara, were cut and removed, affecting voice and data services to over 400 customers.
Nedd said service has been restored to those affected customers, but the company is urging members of the public to report any instance of sabotage.
Nedd said he is positive that there are people out there who have information on the sabotage, and he is urging them to come forward to report the information by reminding them of the latest $500,000 reward for such information.
“It is really sad that rogue elements continue to try to damage our infrastructure. We got a team that (is) always out there to do more and bring better service for our customers,” Nedd said.
GTT is reminding the public to maintain the level of alertness, and to report to the company’s confidential hotline, 226-2764, any act or suspicious act of cable sabotage.

The first act in the recent series of sabotage was detected on July 14, 2017, one day before GTT officially launched the Blaze fibre optic high-speed internet. In February, the company’s fibre optic cable was also sabotaged at a time when it launched its high-speed LTE broadband in Essequibo.
Over the past 12 months, GTT’s loss of service and restoration effort has equated to $50 million, according to the company.
In August, 22-year-old Ricky Singh of Lot ‘F’ Grove, East Bank Demerara was placed on $350,000 bail after he pleaded not guilty to a charge detailing that between July 22 and July 24, 2017 at Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara, he was caught vandalising and stealing the GTT fibre-optic cable.
Twenty-four-year-old fisherman Sanjay Seecharran of Grove Public Road, East Bank Demerara was also recently jailed for three years after confessing to stealing fibre-optic cable from GTT.