The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

DOWNTOWN merchants complained that problems with electricity and phone services across the island damaged their business yesterday.

An employee of United Colours of Benetton said the loss of phone services hurt sales.

She said: "It's definitely an inconvenience because our phone lines are connected to the credit card system so customers have been coming in and their purchases have not been processed."

Mr Flowers from Taylor Industries Ltd complained about damage to appliances and equipment.

He said: "We don't have a working computer system and some equipment has been damaged, phone lines have been damaged and there has been long lines of customers waiting."

Nick Simmons of the Breitling store said of the power outage: "While our building has a generator, many buildings are not equipped with generators. About 70 per cent of the buildings don't benefit from generators so they have it especially bad."

Some store employees blamed the former government for the loss of phone services.

"BTC seems worse after being privatised," said Carson Hepburn. "Right now I'm glad to see that the previous government didn't have a chance to privatise BEC, because they wanted to privatise that too."

Another worker, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "It's sickening. Ingraham was warned about selling the company to the Trinidadians."