GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

As yes­ter­day’s is­land­wide in­ter­net out­age showed T&T’s grow­ing de­pen­dence on ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive con­nec­tiv­i­ty, busi­ness own­ers said they were thank­ful the dis­rup­tion oc­curred in the morn­ing be­fore busi­ness­es were op­er­at­ing at full stream.

T&T Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Reyaz Ahamad who de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “un­for­tu­nate” added, “The Cham­ber got many calls from the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty try­ing to find out what was go­ing on. While it is un­for­tu­nate what took place it shows our re­liance on dig­i­tal for­mat and when these things hap­pen they are should be com­mu­ni­cat­ed prop­er­ly and that the sys­tem goes back on­line as soon as pos­si­ble.

“Be­cause of this there was an ob­vi­ous loss of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” Ahamad added.

He said there was al­so a de­cline in sales as the out­age re­sult­ed in Linx ma­chines be­ing tem­porar­i­ly shut down.

Pres­i­dent of the Ari­ma Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Reval Chat­ter­goon who echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments said the out­age must be a les­son for T&T as to its fu­ture plans re­gard­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

“There is a les­son to be learnt as to what is our back-up plan. The en­tire Ari­ma which is more or less IT-ori­ent­ed was to­tal­ly shut down. Even pay­ment by cred­it cards was in a to­tal mess.

Reval Chattergoon

ABRAHAM DIAZ

“Most peo­ple had to go back to hand-writ­ten bills and cash pay­ments on­ly,” Chat­ter­goon ex­plained.

He said in­ter­net bank­ing was al­so se­vere­ly af­fect­ed.

Even as ser­vice slow­ly re­sumed short­ly around mid­day yes­ter­day, Chat­ter­goon said mem­bers were still hand­i­capped to con­duct busi­ness.

“It was very slow. We ought not to be in this po­si­tion. It is dis­heart­en­ing to know that in an in­stant all the com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the out­side world and even in­ter­nal­ly went back to the 1960s. There must be a back­up plan be­cause it is very em­bar­rass­ing what we went through this from a busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty be­cause we were try­ing to reach our clients and sup­pli­ers and every­thing was in a to­tal craze. A lot of peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced great fi­nan­cial loss­es,” Chat­ter­goon added.

He said should some­thing like this hap­pen again he would im­plore his mem­bers and al­so T&T to im­ple­ment a func­tion­al con­tin­gency plan.

Chat­ter­goon said even though the out­age last­ed a cou­ple of hours which sev­er­al af­fect­ed sales and busi­ness op­er­a­tions he said had it last­ed a bit longer it could have had crip­pling ef­fects.

Jai Leladharsingh

Shirley Bahadur

“We need sup­port from all sup­pli­ers, Dig­i­cel and Flow to en­sure this does not oc­cur again and they need to show the pub­lic what they are do­ing,” Chat­ter­goon added.

Jai Lelad­hars­ingh, co-or­di­na­tor of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers (CR­BC) said em­ploy­ees work­ing from home were al­so im­pact­ed which on­ly wors­ened pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

“The in­ter­net has be­come an im­por­tant tool for us to be pro­duc­tive, com­mu­ni­cate and con­tin­gency plans must be put in place to en­sure this does not re­oc­cur,” Lelad­hars­ingh re­it­er­at­ed.