The Story Within The Story… The Army and Telecoms Liberalisation

Oct 11, 2020 Features / Columnists, News, The Story within the Story

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By Leonard Gildarie

Kaieteur News – Any country that is worth its salt has to learn to take calculated risks. It has to learn to maximize on its resources. It has to learn to use established scientific reasoning for projects and look long term at its planning.
I look to smaller states where they have little resources except blue or green waters and sands and yet they boast major hotels and modern highways. There are no gold mines, bauxite, oil, forests, or even farming.
Of course, COVID-19 barged in like a wrecking ball and flattened economies; made millions jobless and closed hundreds of thousands of businesses.
Countries that had little money for social programmes suddenly had to divert resources to insignificant things like masks and protective suits.
Countries that depended on tourism are still reeling. Many of them are prepared mentally to deal with the destruction that comes in the wake of hurricanes. It is however hard to envisage and plan for a Category 100 super-storm called COVID-19.
As I write on Friday evening, the news is grim for Guyana. It was the deadliest day since March – four persons died with the youngest being a 28-year-old from Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam).
The death toll has gone past the 100 mark. Unthinkable.
The wakeup knell had sounded a long time before. I will not be drawn into comparisons to how bad it is in other countries. I am concerned with what is happening here.
It is time for Guyana to wake up and smell the coffee. People are dying. The hospitals are filled. Normal medical cases are placed on the backburner and Guyana is struggling to find more bed.
A male nurse who worked for over three decades at the Georgetown Hospital died last week after retiring. He reportedly passed away at the same hospital where he toiled. It was a rude awakening of the harsh reality our Planet Earth is facing.
In modern times, there has not been another like COVID-19.
We cannot overstate the obvious and what has been reported in different prose ad nauseam…we will pay the price unless we protect ourselves.
I say no further as this conversation will continue.
The past week saw two major announcements which I believe we must highlight.
The first had to do with a major announcement by Government that it has signed orders that allow new telecoms companies to enter the market and compete to bring faster and cheaper internet, landlines and a host of other services.
Immediately, reportedly, Digicel announced the halving of its costs for international calls.
E-Networks, privately owned, recently introduced its 5-G services…faster internet that comes under $10,000 monthly.
Digicel, an Irish-owned company, has been eyeing the landlines and lucrative internet market.
GTT, US-owned, has dropped the ball badly. It should be ashamed.
A virtually unknown US company came here and took a tottering state-owned telephone company over in the 90s. The story is that ATN built its portfolio on the Guyanese market. Over the years, GTT was cursed, criticized, slam-dunked but it seems as if there was no care.
A decade ago, the Bharrat Jagdeo administration, exasperated at the sloth of development and hearing the cries of the masses about the quality of services, announced it was moving to break the monopoly. GTT had the monopoly, on paper, on international calls and on landlines.
It used the landlines, according to the story being bandied, to fetch its DSL service yet claim the landlines were loss-making.
A few years ago, the regulator was forced to order GTT to install a number of landlines annually.
Almost three decades in Guyana, GTT will boast of poor services in Essequibo and Berbice.
Don’t ask me…ask the folks in those counties.
GTT is a strange company. It has infrastructure in place. It has thousands of persons.
It is being threatened by liberalization.
Why in the world then would you not then try to hold on to probably the most lucrative portfolio in its list of holdings across the globe?
It is the truth…GTT is said to be a cash cow.
The GTT saga tells a sordid story of how our regulators and government dropped the ball and failed to protect its people.
The level of service and response to fault reporting was simply unacceptable.
It is impossible for anyone on the coastland to complain about faults taking one month to fix.
It is inconceivable.
The pandemic has clearly exposed our shortcomings as evidenced by how challenged our education system was.
I can’t understand how GTT with so many customers failed to capitalize on providing services that were needed and could be paid for.
We understand it is cheaper to develop mobile services.
The conclusions could easily be drawn that GTT simply does not care.
Even in the face of the damning liberalization decision taken last week by Government, the company appears to have taken it all in strides and promises in hollow-sounding words that it will be there.
It was almost like an afterthought.
GTT has left a bitter taste in the mouths of Guyanese.
Should any company arrive tomorrow and offer the same services, there would be no surprise what will happen to GTT.
There are scores of staffers there. They are decent and hardworking people.
I fear for them.
What is mind-boggling in all this is the fact that this government, in just two months, did what another government failed to do in five years. It is simply astonishing. What changed so dramatically in those two months?
There was one other announcement by Government that had me smiling.
Finally, I said to myself, somebody is thinking outside of the box.
It was the news that President Irfaan Ali met with army officials on the use of engineers playing a bigger role in infrastructure for the hinterlands.
We spend billions to upkeep the army. It is peace time despite the rattling of the sabers by Venezuela.
There were many who believed that the army should be playing a bigger role in domestic security.
There is indeed a mechanism – the Joint Services collaboration – that exists.
However, with the crime situation as is and the fact that the police force is hard-pressed and understaffed, there was a belief that an opportunity existed.
To hear the President, as the Commander-in-Chief, challenging the army to use resources to build bridges and roads in the hinterlands to far-flung communities, is refreshing.
There has to be other ideas similar to this on how we can harness synergies in a cross-section of our country. Two important stories.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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