General News of Thursday, 14 March 2002

Source: gna

Financial difficulties affect GT's cable network projects

Ghana Telecom Company on Wednesday said that its cable network projects had come to a standstill because of financial difficulties. Mr Albert Enninful, General Manager in charge of the Switching and Transmission Network Implementation Department of the Company, made this known to the Ghana News Agency in an interview in Accra.

"It isn't that Ghana Telecom does not want to serve the people. We are ever ready to provide our services. "After all, it is money we want, but we are (locked up) in a financial crisis." Mr Enninful said, adding that contractors had stopped work because the company owed them six million dollars.

He mentioned areas like Gbawe, Kpando, Saltpond and Adenta as places where they were facing a lot of connecting problems due to insufficient resources. Mr Enninful said some of the uncompleted works dated back to 1998, adding that these problems had made the public to lose confidence in Ghana Telecom.

He explained, however, that this was not the fault of the company. Mr Enninful said it carried out an expansion project in Madina last year, but could not give the number of lines that were provided.

Mr John Jones Tetteh, Area Manager, Madina, said all lines to areas such as the SSNIT Flats, Madina Township, East Legon, Haatso, Ogbojo and Ashalley Botwe had been allocated.

Mr Tetteh commended customers in the area for their patronage of Ghana Telecom services saying with a switch capacity of about 21,000 it had been able to serve nearly 14,000 customers in the area.