Dear Editor,
On February 16 Kaieteur News headline read “Competition for cellular service achiev-ed, International and Landline may be next” – President.
In the said article the President, Bharrat Jagdeo, went on to say “Government’s effort to engender a competitive telecommunications sector has been realised with the advent of one of the leading mobile telephone network providers in the Caribbean, Digicel.”
According to the administration, this is just the beginning of the sector’s liberalisation.
Mr Editor, I wish to endorse the sentiments of President and administration, Guyanese are hungry for competition. However these competitions are not only akin to the telephone industry but the entire communication sector. The question will then be when will we see an end to the radio monopoly which is solely in the hands of government control? When will Linden and other areas get news and information that are not government biased or PPP/C Projected?
And when will there be a level playing field for printed media like Stabroek News which had the government’s advertisements pulled from its papers.
From the president’s comments on the launching it would appear as though this is a move by the wielders of governmental powers to pressurise GT&T rather than to encourage real competition in the industry.
Yes Guyana truly needs industries to be competitive and to be more liberalised so I would expect that the government’s next move would be to encourage more private companies to compete in the power industry.
Yours faithfully,
Courtney Jacobs
