60% of vandalized FLOW infrastructure occurs in St Catherine | Old Harbour region among main target areas

How many? Too many to count for some aggrieved and frustrated customers, many of whom have been without regular service for as much as nine months going to a year.

This is largely due to theft and vandalism to its infrastructure, a major prolonged and agonizing headache for the telecommunications company. Last year alone the company said it expended over US$600,000 on restoring infrastructure as a direct result of theft and vandalism.

Areas such as Spring Village, Nightingale Grove, Lloyd’s Pen, Sharper Lane, Bower’s Drive are among an extensive list of St Catherine communities impacted as a result of this seemingly never-ending illicit practice targeting cell sites, where perimeter fences, batteries, generators and petrol are stolen frequently. Additionally cable wires are destroyed and the copper removed and sold on the lucrative black market where thousands of Jamaican dollars are exchanged for the precious commodity.

St Catherine is the primary target for these hoodlums with just over 60 percent of the more 450 incidents reported in 2019 occurring in the parish, stated Sophia Morgan, manager of customer experience at FLOW.

Morgan who was speaking at last Monday’s Town Hall Meeting organized by the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) at the Institute of Vocational and Professional Training in Spring Village said the continuous service disruption is part of a bigger challenge the company is desperately trying to overcome.

“In many instances as soon as we replaced the infrastructure and before we even energise them they are stolen again,” she explained to an audience of students and community members.

She said the company has been asking the government to include such acts of vandalism under the Terrorism Act because under existing legislation criminals get a slap on the wrist.

“What happens now is that when the culprits are caught all they are charged for is simple larceny,” said Morgan. “Apart from that we have taken steps of our own. We have put up electrical fences and they cut it, we have put up 24-hour surveillance across the island at some of our locations, we have increased patrols, we have gone as far as put the cables underground and cement the manhole, and they still dig and cut the wires.”

“So the moneys that we are supposed to use for upgrading the network we have to use it for replacing stolen items and vandalism,” she added. “Notwithstanding, we are not going to stop, we are going to use our best efforts to see how best we can continue to protect our network.”

The FLOW manager said the company has started to replace copper cables with fibre to reduce damage to its wires and continue to make improvements to its LTE mobile network among other areas to better serve its customers.

She said individuals are now able to talk to FLOW agents live via WhatsApp at 876 620 2200 and the creation of a self-help option and online chat as ways the company is improving its customer experience.