GTT CEO tells Bartica residents poor service will be a thing of the past

Oct 17, 2021 News

Friday’s meeting with the Bartica residents

Kaieteur News – The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GTT), Damian Blackburn, on Friday promised residents of Bartica, Region Seven that the poor service they have been receiving over the years “will be a thing of the past.”

CEO of GTT, Damien Black Burn

Blackburn was forced to make this promise after the residents gave him “a good tongue lashing” for what they labelled as “unreliable service” provided to them by GTT.
Speaking with Kaieteur News yesterday, Chairman of Region Seven, Kenneth Williams, said that residents recently lodged a plethora of complaints against the company. Those complaints, he said, were centred on poor customer and supply services for landlines and internet connectivity.

An apologetic Blackburn during the meeting

As a result, he decided to invite the CEO of the company, Blackburn, to a meeting with the Bartica residents to listen to their issues. Williams said he got the opportunity to extend that invitation to Blackburn during a virtual stakeholders meeting with the business community on August 8, 2021.
The GTT CEO reportedly accepted the invitation and a face-to-face meeting with the Bartica residents was scheduled for Friday, October 15, 2021 at 10:00hrs.Kaieteur News was told that during the meeting, the residents did not hold back and did not waste time in unanimously telling Blackburn how poor his company’s service is.

A Bartica resident telling the CEO how poor his company’s service is.

Chairman of Region Seven, Kenneth Williams

They told him that they have to endure possibly the “worst internet service provided by the company in Guyana.”
The residents said too that GTT is very unreliable in the evenings especially after 20:00hrs. Additionally, they bashed the company for lengthy delays in “restoring service when phone lines are down.”
Blackburn in response, apologised for his GTT’s shortcomings in Bartica and called it “past sins of the company.”
He assured the residents that that such issues will not continue to occur under his watch and promised that in six months’ time Bartica will receive mordernised internet service. Blackburn also agreed to have an office in Bartica and stated that lengthy response time, dropped calls and stoppage in the internet service during the evenings are unacceptable.
Blackburn was made CEO of GTT in April of this year and is the first non-Guyanese to hold that position.
GTT had held a monopoly for some 30 years, however, the government decided to liberalise the sector and this has allowed other companies to compete with the telephone company.

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