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Attorney at law, &harles 5amson, has said that the

contract inked be tween ([[on0obil and Guyana is reminiscent of the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph GTT , which al lowed that company to stifle the nation.

In , the 3eople 1ational &ongress 31& govern ment and Atlantic Tele 1etwork AT1 signed an agreement in which AT1 acquired percent shares in GTT and the government retained percent. GT T subsequently commenced operations on -anuary ,

.

According to 5amson, the ([[on0obil contract is Must as oppressive as the GTT contract and will see gen erations suffering the con sequences, “but the effects of this contract ([[on0o bil¶s will be worse.” 5amson said “The contract with ([[on will trap Guy ana for decades to come even after the A318 A)& loses power the situation with GT T¶s year mo nopoly of Guyana¶s interna tional voice and data traffic awarded by the 31&.” 5amson noted that the GTT contract has severely re stricted the liberali]ation of the telecommunication sec tor in Guyana for decades causing Guyana to have about the highest telecom munication rate in the world. The money that GTT has been able to make off Guy ana is well known. In the operating year alone, GTT raked in 0 of which 0 was declared as profit. This sort of profit was recorded despite the fact that GTT was paying

0 per month, accumu lating to . % per year, to its parent company, AT1 as “advisory fees” an e[pendi ture that stunned authorities. 0any questioned, how can a company operating in a nation as poor as Guyana make such a large turnover and profits?

:hile Guyana wanted to wriggle itself out of the vice of GTT, the contract was binding and little could have been done. As a result, years later, telecommunica tion in Guyana is still to be liberali]ed.

5amson said that years from now, Guyana will still be feeling the squee]e of the ([[on0obil contract which the A318 A)& Govern ment is not willing to rene gotiate. The oil and gas con sultant said that no contract should have a stabili]ation clause without a term limit. 5amson further noted “5e cently, we heard the 0in ister of 1atural 5esources saying that the contract will be reviewed in four years, but review doesn¶t mean re negotiate. I hope Guyanese note that.”

The lawyer said Guyana will definitely not be get ting the kind of revenue it deserves from ([[on0obil. 5amson opined that de cades after Guyana signed the GTT agreement, “there is no way we should have been making the kinds of mistakes made in the ([[ on0obil agreement. 2ur politicians should have learned. 1ow we all have to live with the consequences of mistakes made over and over again.”

(Kaieteur News)