GPL and blackouts

The dramatic upsurge in the number and duration of electricity outages is entirely the fault of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) regime. This is the view of the political opposition; a professional project planning manager and consultant and man in the street with whom this publication spoke.

Since the sharp, dramatic increase in blackouts, the government has been making increasingly unbelievable and outlandish excuses for the outages. However, the regime has finally had to admit that the real reason for the inconvenience to Guyanese is the fact that demand for electricity is now exceeding supply capacity by a significant margin.

Former minister of public infrastructure and current opposition Member of Parliament David Patterson has said that, “The [PPP] government has been opening malls, parks, hospitals and hotels to much fanfare since coming back into the office [more than three years ago], claiming the same was the result of their policies. A primary school student would have known that if on one hand, you willingly add additional commercial entities to the [electricity] grid, then you would need additional generating capacity.” 

The planning expert with whom Village Voice News spoke said that the increased demand for energy was “totally foreseeable.” The manager – who is in the employ of the PPP government – said, “It boggles the mind that the PPP failed to see this coming in light of a ballooning oil and gas industry, and the accompanying multi-faceted, wide-ranging economic and social expansions that are bound to happen.”

The expert noted, too, that the PPP regime claims that it is allocating vast numbers of house lots and turnkey homes, if that is true, then the government is adding huge numbers of residential properties to the power grid. “It is unbelievable that the government could have failed to see a looming catastrophe,” the expert said. The manager also mentioned the fact that it was foreseeable that increasing global temperatures would lead to increased demand for electricity. 

The project manager dismissed the PPP’s current scramble to mitigate the situation as “pathetic and misdirected.” He blamed the current situation on “abysmally poor economic planning.”

Another expert – an economist – has written that bad economic planning is usually due to the following:

• Asymmetric information among the various stake-holders

• Inefficiency in the utilisation of the available resources

• Political self-interest of different political groups

• Corruption in the financial sector while implanting the development plan

• Distribution of resources among different stakeholders in not equal

• Corruption in government  

In response to the worsening electricity situation, the PPP regime has recently announced that the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) will be removing large industrial customers from the grid between 6 hours (6pm) and 22 hours (10pm) daily, in an apparent desperate attempt to reduce power demand. It was announced, too, that some US$27 million is being spent to procure 17 refurbished, heavy fuel oil generators from the Dominican Republic. 

Ordinary Guyanese told this publication they continue to suffer tremendously with their perishable spoiling, appliances damaged, and many afraid to sleep at nights for the fear of bandits, who use the dark as cover to carry out criminal acts.  

The regime continues to demonstrate it has no proper short, medium and long term plan to address the situation and is merely shooting in the dark.