East Mahaicony villages hard hit by prolonged blackout 

Residents and business owners in some East Mahaicony villages are being hard-hit by a power outage which began Tuesday night last and is currently ongoing.

Residents and business places affected are those in the villages of Cape Clear, Champagne and Research in Burma. Residents said that other villages in their environs seem not to be affected.

“The blackout began Tuesday night (May 18) last It has been ongoing since then. To date Thursday (May 20th), at 17:45hrs power has not been restored,” one resident complained.

“People with items in their refrigerators and freezers are beginning to lose meat and other food items which need cold storage. No TV. No internet. No power to recharge cell phones. I charge my cell phone using the lighter port my car. All the usual disruptions when people don’t have electricity in their homes and businesses,” he said.

“What is most frustrating,” he added “is that there has been no word to date from the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) as what the problem is, what they are doing about it and when power will be restored.”

“We the residents ask that the GPL people need to talk to us to let us know what is happening and when power will be restored,” The resident said. Another resident said that he had made calls to GPL and was told that members of the work crew had been found to be infected with the corona virus and others had been pulled off the job for testing. This publication called the GPL office in Berbice and was told that men had been dispatched to the villages to fix the problem. However, villagers disputed this disclosure and said that they had not seen any GPL work in the area. As darkness fell this evening residents in the three East Mahaicony villages are bracing and resigning themselves to being without electricity for the third night straight. Speaking at a news conference on Friday Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo said that government acknowledges that there are problems in the sector and are working to fix them. He blamed the many outages on faulty transmission lines and said that the previous government did not invest in the sector. He promised that his administration will once and for all fix the electricity woes that have bedeviled this country for decades.