The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) says an Americas 11 fibre optic cable was sabotaged on the West Coast Berbice shortly before the opening of the CARICOM Heads of Government Conference on Thursday, triggering concerns within the company that it was a deliberate attempt to create panic.
Chief Executive Officer, GT&T, Major General (Ret’d) Joe Singh said yesterday that service was not disrupted because a redundancy feature in the company’s system kicked in immediately. But the damage that was done was substantial.
Singh referred to the circumstances as “very curious” and declared at a press briefing that the situation results in a very grave state of affairs from a national security standpoint.
“…Why would anyone do something like this, much less on the day when we are hosting the CARICOM summit, we consider this not only an attempt to embarrass GT&T but that something sinister might also be afoot”, Singh said.
Since the service was not disrupted the company kept the situation quiet, Singh said. He noted that GT&T did not want to create a state of panic by suggesting that something sinister unfolded a short while before the summit opened here.
The damage, he explained, stunned the company technicians who were deployed to the area from Berbice and also from the city. He said that the team found that the act was deliberate, in that, the perpetrators damaged the steel casing which provides security for the cable by forcibly removing it. According to the CEO, those involved also tied the cable to a tractor resulting in it snapping. The team was on the ground within minutes of receiving the report which indicated that the incident occurred around 4:25 pm. The company said that restoration was completed around 10:30 pm.
Singh told reporters that the cable was cut on a mud dam a short distance from a beach on the West Coast Berbice. He said that the team endured the difficult conditions at the time and went in to begin working on the restoration. The company also had to deploy generators into the area.
The Head of the telephone company said that investigation by GT&T has revealed that “this was not someone digging carelessly this was a deliberate act of sabotage”. He said too that the company had experienced disruptions in the past, but had never experienced vandalism “like this before”.
Singh emphasized that the situation is an unacceptable state of affairs, adding that apart from the damage to infrastructure, the cost of restoration is substantial. He said too that the incident should create some cause for concern among persons who believe in upholding a national image.
GT&T has reported the matter to the Commissioner of Police and the force has since launched an investigation. Singh said that they are alerting the public to report any suspicious activity that is clearly not consistent with normal maintenance practice.
In the past GT&T has suffered a string of vandalism attacks and only recently a fibre optic cable leading south to Linden was severed with a chainsaw. The company has made no connections between the two incidents, but noted that both are “highly suspicious”.
Meanwhile, GT&T also reported that there was an Americas 11 cable failure which occurred at around 3:04 pm yesterday. The company said that investigations have revealed that the failure is in Suriname, adding that the fault was outside of its area of control.