Latest update April 24th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 16, 2017 News
The government and Atlantic Tele-Network International (ATNI) are of the belief that discussions regarding liberalisation of the telecommunications sector will come to an amicable conclusion before this year end.
This anticipation was expressed by the Ministry of Public Telecommunications through a statement it released yesterday reiterating statements made by the Minister of Public Telecommunications, Catherine Hughes on Thursday as she defended her Ministry’s performance amidst criticisms of underperformance.
The statement noted that in a previous interview Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Greenidge, had led the opening of serious discussions with the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT) and its parent company ATNI in December 2016.
These discussions dealt with the company ending its claimed exclusivity to international communications and landline services.
Hughes had said that negotiations would have come to an end last July. However, in August, at an Alliance for Change’s (AFC) press conference, Hughes said that liberalisation was delayed due to talks between GTT and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA).
She said that the company and the tax entity were working out tax issues. Hughes had said that these talks will have an impact on the liberalisation negotiations between her Ministry, GTT and Digicel Guyana.
The Minister had even said that there is nothing she can do to fast track that specific process since she has no jurisdiction over GRA.
At Thursday’s press conference, Hughes chose to respond to statements made by People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) Member of Parliament, Juan Edghill, in a Kaieteur News article that her Ministry was wallowing in underperformance.
Hughes said that Edghill challenged her to name one thing that her Ministry would have done since its establishment. She said that one of the significant accomplishments of her Ministry is the passage of the Telecommunications legislation in the National Assembly.
Hughes said that the draft legislation was completed in 2001 under the PPP/C administration and nothing further was done to have it finalised and passed into law.
“Mr Edghill and his party or the party to which he is a member had 14 years to do something with that legislation. The Ministry of Public Telecommunications was formed in January 2016 and by August 8, 2016, eight months, as opposed to 14 years. We got that legislation through the parliament.”
In addition to this success, Hughes said that her Ministry has been focusing on digitising education.
“What I mean by that is that we have had as a focus ensuring that we are bringing technology to education and that’s why the President specifically decided that teachers needed to have laptops that were fully loaded with all the syllabi, teaching material, everything, internet access capacity so that they could better serve the children of Guyana.”
Further, she said that her Ministry through the eGovernance programme has given out close to 6,000 laptops to teachers, top performing students, individuals and entities such as the Carnegie School of Home Economics and the Blind Society.
She said that her government also commissioned the eGovernment network that had been sitting dormant for two years and was able to provide free internet access to more than 100 schools across the length and breadth of Guyana.
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