GTT pleased with Police work in nabbing cable vandals

GTT is pleased with the efforts of the Guyana Police Force in arresting and prosecuting two vandals who had, in recent times, been among persons sabotaging its fibre-optic cable.
Twenty-two-year-old Ricky Singh of Lot ‘F’ Grove, East Bank Demerara was on Friday placed on 0,000 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.
GTT has since expressed its gratitude to the Guyana Police Force for the prosecution of these two rogue elements whose theft had affected voice and data services to more than 20,000 customers in several communities.
“The arrest and conviction of one of the accused is significant, since it follows shortly on the appeal by both the Government and GTT for the public to report attempts or acts of vandalism and sabotage. The police was thorough in their investigation,” the company stated.
It added that the motive of the “copper convicts” was, in this instance, financial gain, since they had stolen copper cable, which has lucrative value in the scrap metal market.
GTT has issued a warning to saboteurs who are still lurking around, awaiting opportunity to vandalise the company’s property.
“The saboteurs of the company’s fibre-optic cable, whose intention is to deliberately affect us from Doing More for our customers and Guyana, are still out there. Let’s continue to work together to find them. Thieves and saboteurs must not affect your telecommunication services,” the local telecommunications giant has appealed to the public.
The company is hoping that collective efforts would locate such vandals and deter any other such persons from destroying its fibre-optic cables.
“The company has every confidence that the excellent collaborative work between the Guyana Police Force and good Guyana will lead to the eventual arrest of vandals and saboteurs,” GTT said in its statement on Saturday.
The telecommunications giant is also urging members of the public to call its confidential hotline on 0908 or 226-2764 if they see any suspicious activities.
Of recent, the spate of attack on GTT cables has escalated. In fact, only last month, there were some instances when the company’s cables were sabotaged. As a result of the vandalism, Linden, Ituni, Kwakwani, Mabura, Mahdia, Troy Mining, and communities in Bartica were affected.
Subsequently, CEO of GTT, Justin Nedd, had called on Guyanese to assist the company to capture the vandals, and had even offered a reward of million in this regard. He had called the attack a destruction of GTT’s communication infrastructure by persons who had clear motives. GTT workers discovered, on July 24, that the company’s Blaze fibre-optic cables at one location were sabotaged just one day before they were launched; and in February, a similar act of vandalism was perpetrated on the company after the GTT had just launched its high speed LTE broadband in Essequibo.
The estimated losses had amounted to some million.