Chief Executive Officer of GT&T, Major General (ret’d) Joe Singh says that the recent vandalism of the Cable Landing Station at Totness, Coronie in Suriname, is not expected to delay the ongoing US$60 million project for a Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS).

According to Surinamese media reports, the Cable Landing Station was vandalized on Friday evening during which valuable equipment was damaged while some was stolen.  According to these reports, the damage done is in the vicinity of US$1 million.

Singh told Stabroek News on Wednesday that since Friday’s incident the Surinamese officials have been able to effect repairs and are currently monitoring the new system.  He said that based on these developments, “no slippage for the project” is anticipated.

The SG-SCS is viewed as a critical project for transforming the local telecommunication sector. The deal for the cable system was inked between GT&T and Surinamese telecommunications company TELESUR in December 2009.  In January GT&T commissioned the shore-end landing of the SG-SCS at the Kingston seawall.  The project will see the two countries linked through a state-of-the-art 1,200 kilometre (700 mile) submarine fibre optic cable connected to a worldwide network of similar cables through a landing station in Trinidad. The cable will be routed from Chaguaramas, Trinidad to a branching unit in the Atlantic from where it will be diverted to Georgetown in Guyana and Paramaribo in Suriname.  The integrated cable system will have the potential capacity of increasing the telecommunications bandwidth by 3,000 to 4,000 times more than what is currently available through the Americas 11 cable and satellite link. The cable is set to be made operational sometime during the course of this year.