Protestors meet with BTL management
On the heels of Wednesday’s demonstration against Belize Telecommunications Limited, organisers of the protest have met with top company officials to discuss possible ways forward. According to Nuri Muhammad, the meeting with B.T.L.’s C.E.O. Ediberto Tesucum, Marketing and Sales Manager Karen Bevans, and Carlisle Holdings C.E.O. Ian Pluthero, was amicable but it is clear the company isn’t going to budge from its current position.
Nuri Muhammad, Pres., Small and Micro Business Assoc.
“One of the things that they seem intent on letting us know, was that government knew that these increases were to come and didn’t show any objection. Of course, they were talking about the then minister responsible for telecommunications. And they seem intent on driving that point home, that if government itself was not in objection to this raise, then why are we.”
Janelle Chanona
“Your overall fight has been to get the company to lower rates. Are you any closer to achieving that end?”
Nuri Muhammad
“Yeah. We feel that if the company takes into consideration the wide expression of discontent, which was not only based on the protest yesterday, but we have been seeing a series of articles and hearing it on talk-shows, the much discussion surrounding this increase. And that the P.U.C. has come forward to say that they are going to take it up and will do what has to be done to address these rate and bring it down. We felt that we left the meeting at least hearing their side. We didn’t feel from the responses we got, that they were prepared in any way respond positively to the massive protest yesterday. In fact, when we placed that question to them, the response was, well we have a customer base of over forty-nine thousand and if a thousand people are dissatisfied, that’s not an expression of the other forty-eight thousand.”
Attempts to solicit comment from both the Public Relations Department and the Sales and Marketing Department of B.T.L. were unsuccessful as both managers were busy in meetings all day. Muhammad is urging all concerned customers to publicly voice dissatisfaction about the increased rates either in writing to the Public Utilities Commission or in person at the public meeting scheduled for next Tuesday at 10:00a.m. at the Radisson Fort George.
