The Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) categorically rejects BK International’s attempt to “deliberately misrepresent the facts” surrounding the destruction of its cable infrastructure at Diamond, East Bank Demerara, saying the contractors were working outside of their assigned zone when the incident occurred.
In two press releases issued yesterday, both GT&T and the Ministry of Public Works said that the location of the damaged fibre optic cable in Tuesday’s incident was entirely outside of the area where Bk International was assigned to work.
“BK International uprooted a structurally sound pole and in the process damaged our buried cable infrastructure,” GT&T said. “The cable infrastructure could not remain exposed,” the company said, adding that it had to replace the pole almost immediately.
GT&T informed the Works Services Group of the Public Works Ministry of the circumstances surrounding the cable damage and it is aware that the group contacted the contractor. The company also reiterates that its counterpart in government road construction activities is the ministry and not any individual contractor and it prefers to collaborate with road construction contractors through the ministry.
GT&T and BK International have frequently been at odds over the disruption of telephony and data services since the 2011 start of the East Bank four-lane road expansion project.
Contractors and other persons involved in the execution of civil works have caused disruption to these services across the country as much as 10 times since that date, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes because they fail to call before they commence excavations, GT&T said in a previous press release.
“The consequential damage to the company’s network infrastructure, especially our buried cables, is disruptive to our business, cost millions to restore, inconveniences our customers, undermines revenue generation, and can potentially compromise national security,” the company said.
Further, in recent months several business customers who rely on data services to transmit and receive “mission critical” data and information have been affected by service disruptions consequent upon excavation works by contractors and others who failed to first enquire whether buried cable was in the vicinity of the excavation site. These businesses include the Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry, Republic Bank, Courts (Guyana) Ltd, Guyana Police Force, Demerara Distillers Limited, Guyana and Trinidad Mutual, Diamond Diagnostic Centre and others, the company said.
The most recent damage to the cable on Tuesday, during works by BK International, occurred about 13.5 km from Georgetown. This resulted in disruption to GT&T and thousands of its customers located as far away as the East Bank Essequibo and the Essequibo Coast, the West Bank and West Coast Demerara. Damage to another cable, detected yesterday, along the Soesdyke /Linden Highway resulted in disruption to telephone service in numerous communities in Linden as well as Ituni, Kwakwani, Mahdia and Mabura.
Meanwhile, BK International said GT&T’s planting of a telephone pole in the centre of a new East Bank carriageway, between the Diamond intersection and the Diamond SLS Supermarket, effectively halted construction on a significant section of the roadway within the East Bank road expansion project.
In a press release the company said its crews were working on the new carriageway on Tuesday when an old GT&T pole collapsed. Since none of its staff was injured, BK said its workers assisted the GT&T crew to pull up the ruptured buried cable.
