The Chief Executive Officer of Ghana Telecom (GT), Mr. Oystein Bjorge, has said that customers of GT, including individuals and companies, owe the company to the tune of more than ?100 billion.

Mr. Bjorge revealed this to Chronicle yesterday when he spoke to the paper at his office.

According to him, this amount of money does not include overdue bills from government ministries, departments and agencies but from only private customers and companies.

He said although several reminders were sent to people and institutions that owe the company, all fell on deaf ears.

He said it is based on this that the company is going all out on a mass disconnection exercise shortly to retrieve all monies owed by customers.

He reminded customers of GT that phone lines, which would be disconnected, may be given to people who would be prepared to pay their bills on time.

He said the company is embarking on this exercise because they need pay their workers.

On the fixing of 400,000 new fixed lines before 2005 and the extension of telephone lines to all secondary and tertiary institutions, he said an agreement had been signed with a vendor to supply them with switches and other radio equipment to start work.

"These pieces of equipment are expected in the country very soon, where the Customer Access Network (CAN) would be built immediately," he added.

He also stated that the installation of fraud detection and prevention devices are almost complete and warned all Internet Service Providers who are still engaged in the illegal VOIP practices to desist from it.

He held that one other measure that the GT is using to curb this illegal practice is to turn all telephone lines owned by the ISPs into one-way traffic.

Commenting on the promise by Telenor to train the staff of GT, he announced that a comprehensive training programme has been drawn up to train workers in turns at the their training school.

"Old training equipment at the school are being replaced for proper academic and practical training to be done," he stated, acknowledging that mini training exercises are on going in company.

He advised the public to be patient with them as they are doing all their capacity to undertake this huge task of improving telephone services in the country.