The Board of the National Communica-tions Network (NCN) will be meeting this week to discuss reports that the state television outfit has unused equipment for satellite uplinking, a service which it had contracted out at significant expense.
NCN Chairman Bish Panday told Stabroek News that any comment at the board level into the entity’s possible satellite uplinking capabilities would be premature.
He said that the board is to meet this week when a thorough discussion will be had on recent reports in the Kaieteur News alleging that NCN has been in possession of satellite uplink equipment that lay unused in a storeroom since 2013. The uplink facility was contracted from a local television station to transmit the signal of the Guyana Learning Channel (GLC) across the country.
“NCN is a national organisation and the public has a right to know,” Panday told Stabroek News.
A five-year contract worth $185M was signed between the government and Television Guyana Inc (TVG) in 2010 to provide a satellite uplink facility for the Learning Channel. Currently, the government is paying TVG $3.6 million per month in a bundled package for services inclusive of the uplinking cost to the NSS-806 satellite.
In May 2013, GLC Head Dr Seeta Shah-Roath told Stabroek News that NCN had dismissed the uplinking of the GLC as “not a viable project, both technically and financially,” which resulted in no public tender for the service.
She had told this newspaper that when she had first approached NCN on the issue of providing satellite services for the GLC, top persons there had told her that it would be “first world technology being put into a third world scenario”. She said that in a meeting with NCN she was told that it was only possible to downlink and use terrestrial-based broadcasting which was in line with technology being used by NCN. Subsequently a deal was struck with TVG which had the uplinking capabilities.
The same month former Prime Minister Samuel Hinds had told Stabroek News that plans for NCN to be given satellite uplink capabilities were dashed by then opposition, APNU and AFC’s, budget cuts in the same year.
The legend for NCN’s allocation of $65 million in the 2012 capital projects profile, says: “The project includes purchase of production equipment for various locations, including broadcast loggers, amplifiers, antenna system with combiners, transmission lines, fibre-optic cables, fibre media convertors, teleprompter, microphones, headsets, tripods, recorders, workstations and generator.” It was also meant to facilitate the purchase of a vehicle. However, under the same allocation of $65 million in 2013, it was stated that some of the money would be going toward the purchase of satellite downlink and uplink equipment.
In response to Hinds’ disclosure, former broadcaster Anthony Vieira and veteran broadcast journalist Enrico Woolford, both pointed out that the Learning Channel went on the air in 2011, while the government still had a majority in the National Assembly and before any budget cuts.
Vieira maintained that there was not supposed to be an uplink outside of the operations of GT&T, which has a monopoly on such services. “They would have had to apply for an uplink to expand TVG,” he said.
Meanwhile, former NCN CEO, Mohamed ‘Fuzzy’ Sattaur in a letter to Stabroek News on Friday said that he had nothing to do with the uplink equipment which was said to have been found at NCN. In the letter Sattaur stated that “The failure here seems to be on the part of the Board of Directors and the Management team at NCN at the time of the receipt of the equipment in the third quarter of 2013. Either they were not aware of the purpose of the purchased equipment or they simply dropped the ball and failed to proceed with the implementation of the system.
“Clearly the blame for this cannot be placed on my shoulders as I was not part of the Management team or the Board of Directors for the last three and one half years.”
Sattaur stepped down from NCN in June 2012 after the NCN Board launched an investigation into suspected financial irregularities at the network and a report was delivered to former President Donald Ramotar. Former NCN Programme Manager Martin Goolsarran and Sattaur were implicated in the irregularities. Sattaur subsequently resigned and Goolsarran was suspended.
Stabroek News has been told that the Office of the Prime Minister has also launched an investigation into the equipment found at NCN.
Stabroek News reached out to former CEO acting of NCN, Michael Gordon who would have been heading the state entity at the time of the equipment’s acquisition. He refrained from commenting saying that he did not want to involve himself as he is no longer in the CEO position at the company. Current CEO Molly Hassan could not be reached.
