After costing over $1 billion, the botched fibre optic cable project—or at least sections of it—might have to be scrapped, as a preliminary evaluation shows major defects.
“There is one area alone that has 35 breakages and for fibre optic that is a high number… It is too early to say because we are awaiting a series of assessments but… it can very well mean that we will have to scrap the project,” New Project Manager and head of renamed Government Data Centre (GOVNET) Floyd Levi told Stabroek News in an interview.
Levi said that by January, 2016, a report on the Lethem to Georgetown Fibre Optic Cable Project will be completed along with other physical and network infrastructure analysis and the David Granger administration will then decide on a way forward. In the meantime, the project is on hold.
In the interim, he informed, the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) has been contracted to provide high speed internet service and this will continue for 2016 until a determination is made on the way forward.
“We are testing a high capacity connection from GTT to ensure that we can have that internet distributed to every area that services the network. Once we establish that that is working properly, we will move to purchase higher capacity internet from GTT in a consolidated form that we will distribute to government agencies and ministries,” Levi stated.
The laying of the fibre optic cable was part of a $3.1 billion E-governance project that commenced in January 2011 and was supposed to be completed in 2012. However, several setbacks saw its completion delayed. In 2014, it was revealed by the then project manager Alexei Ramotar and then head of the presidential secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon that the cable laying, on which $1 billion had been spent, had been botched and would require approximately $2 billion to rehabilitate.
Levi said the evaluation team has reported on broken cables that were shallowly buried when they were required to be laid at least three feet underground. Others were scantily slung on poles and some left open on trails and roadways.
He said the blame for the shoddy work should not be laid on the contractors but on the project managers and engineering consultants who were to overlook the project. “To blame the contractors at this time would be premature… There was a project management team and they were required to ensure that the contractors performed in order for them to be paid,” he said.
Shortly before the May 11, general and regional elections the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) administration had rushed and made what critics, such as the Working People’s Alliance (WPA) called a “sweetheart deal” with Dax Engineering for the rehabilitation of the project. The contract would have seen Dax having the use of a number of cables for 40 years in exchange for rehabilitation and maintenance of the cable for a 25-year duration, subject to a further 15-year renewal.
The WPA had stressed that assets acquired, with the monies spent thus far on the project by government, such as radio equipment, antennae and equipment to set up towers and communication posts across the country, had not been valued before the transfer of the project to Dax. As a result, it added that there is no way to know, in dollar figure amounts, how much Dax was really getting out of the project.
However, in August government terminated that contract with Dax without prejudice, making it clear that the contract was “unsustainable.”
The new Project Manager told this newspaper that the expert evaluative ICT team continues to test the viability of what remains of the Brazil – Georgetown fibre optic project to determine if any of it can be salvaged.
As a result, government will not engage with any possible investors for the project until the findings and recommendations are returned. “That evaluation will inform us on the way forward,” Levi stressed.
Maintenance of sites where towers were erected continues at a cost of approximately $900,000 monthly. This caters for the weeding and upkeep of the areas.
However, if the project is scrapped not all will be lost. As Levi explained, “There are certain parts… the portion along the coast can definitely be used and that is what we are testing at the moment. The sites that exist between Charity in the Pomeroon and Springlands in Berbice they definitely will be used. As it relates to the portion that is going towards Lethem, that is a different matter. We wait on the analysis for that.”
If the Lethem to Georgetown section is scrapped, government will seek to procure its data services from GTT at a competitive price and the company has promised that government will be given value for money as its price would not be matched by competitors. “Government has approached GTT and we are very serious in our approach with GTT to use them as the provider for internet to the government of Guyana…now the cost of that will depend on how much internet capacity government will decide to take on a monthly basis,” he said.
“They have also indicated that once government moves in the direction of buying a consolidated amount of internet, they will give us prices that we cannot get elsewhere,” he added.
It is with the towers on the coastlands that GTT is carrying out its high speed internet testing for services to GOVNET.
Levi said provision has been made by the agency in the 2016 budget for GTT to continue to provide those services.
Currently GOVNET is staffed with 40 ICT professionals while an anticipated 50 others are expected to be hired soon to meet the needs of the agency.
