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Dear Editor
Senior and junior staff of the Guyana Power and Light Inc(GPL) are eagerly awaiting a change in crucial areas as it relates to the working environment,safety protocols and professionalism. It has been approximately one year since a few sensitive letters broke the press. Ideally, the effect of the letters were somewhat insignificant with no follow up procedures to properly resolve those issues listed by the employees.
A number of things are being swept under the rug and again this is a last resort forum the staff have to use to address their concerns. New staff are still not being trained properly but are expected to function responsively and accurately irrespective of the strenuous and inadequate environment created by the seniors. The health and safety of workers are also being threatened during the pandemic period and the company should put every available system in place in accordance with the MOH/WHO workplace guidelines to ensure that all staff feel safe and protected. The number of customers allowed in the building is not properly managed.Mask and sanitizers are not provided as frequent as it should be in most departments if not all . Staff are being pressured due to the current shift system and rules are not being properly implemented as it related to consumers resolving their queries without the worry of the spread of covid 19.
Some departments are unable to practice social distancing due to the work load and demand to ensure the public needs are met.
They are persons who are not being rotated on a shift system but yet managers have the luxury of working from home and being rotated as a regular staff. Managers are least likely to be infected compared to other staff since they have an office space where they can control the flow of persons entering and existing and they can chose to have the front desk staff carry out the threatening functions of interacting with customers as if there is no pandemic. Special attention should be placed on persons who have serious health conditions where their immune system is compromised. GPL why wait until fatality strikes then make adjustments; think of persons with family members who are also high risk of being exposed. They are recent cases of staffs who were tested positive for Covid-19 and the numbers continue to rise globally but managers continue to make a constant excuse that staff are rotated and there is not much management can do at this point.
On another note the personnel division continues to fail at their function to provide transparency with recruiting the right persons for the job, training and development and by improving employees quality of life by enforcing adequate health and safety rules. A few suggestions ; hire a very professional, universal and objective panel where the interference from other department heads will be greatly minimized. Over the years there have been many poor choices based on the list of candidates who were elected to attend interviews,matter of factly employees continue to say that over the past two years, some of those candidates were the poorest choices in the history of the Guyana Power & Light.
They were more than six instances where the successful candidate (s) who were chosen for the respective position through a broken system generally did not performed in a better capacity or were not more qualified compared to the other candidates.
Mr. Editor we do not believe that certification should supersede on the job experience or years of service but it must be fairly measured before conformity to a post. Conditions should never be granted out of the ordinary if most of the requested job descriptions are not met. Human Resources should not include competencies of tertiary education if conditions are unreasonably applied to specific persons.
Conduct is very important and many times its poorly displayed by supervisors and managers. Imagine being managed by an acting supervisor who is far from articulate, but very skillful at dishonest practices and is very eager to come down on junior staffers for their common natural errors. Would you not consider the system and the division as jokers who keep upholding flimsy practices ? It is a total breach of protocol for a supervisor to allow forgery of documents ,this incident along with several others such incidents of breaches of the SOP’s were escalated to the attention of the Director of Customer Services and nothing came out of it. A few months ago a letter was written in your newspaper highlighting the hiring and shortlisting practices at the Guyana Power and Light Inc.The author touched on several instances where management showed a biased approach to shortlisting applicants for positions. After that letter was published,the management of GPL held a meeting where aggrieved staff could air their grievances as a body ,sad to say that many of the staff felt that that forum would only make them a target for victimization and they chose not to attend nor to say anything.
It’s been almost one year since that letter was published and those practices still exists .Persons who have university degrees/diplomas are overlooked and in most cases are not shortlisted for persons. At present there is a supervisor in the commercial department who do not possess a first degree nor diploma or any form of tertiary studies but was given the position on the condition that they pursue tertiary level studies.Almost one year after and it is alleged that the person is yet to continue their tertiary level of education but has been confirmed in the said position. There is an acting supervisor who may be the longest first year University of Guyana student and who is seen as a complete mockery to the system because their manipulative and extortive qualities. Imagine junior staffers being supervised by crooks , who encourage and assist with breaching protocols. Mr. Editor, just imagine being placed in a position where your clerical duties are being interfered with by an acting supervisor because the intention is to have the documents signed by someone else other than the applicant or an authorized personnel. We do not need power drunk attributes to continue it is tactless and it makes the organization looks like a complete joke; our front line workers are often verbally abused because public citizens form their own concepts based on matters that are left unresolved.
I am calling on the subject Minister responsible for the electricity sector as well as workers union (NAACIE) to have a forensic audit done especially in area of hiring and shortlisting practices as well as the working conditions that the staff at The Guyana Power and Light Inc have to endure . The public will be updated very frequently as of now with the actions taken to solve these industrial problems.
Sincerely yours
Concerned staff
