By Rawle Lucas- Try as one might to positively evaluate the work of the government, it always finds ways to contradict itself and reinforce negative views of its performance. The latest incident concerns the attempts of top leaders of the government to deflect blame for the nation’s electricity woes from themselves to the APNU+AFC or Coalition government. One statement in a press release from DPI that caught my attention reads “… the now opposition, during its 2015-2020 tenure did not reinvest in new capacity”.
When a similar effort to blame the Coalition government came from the mouth of the Prime Minister previously, I put it down to politicking and the privilege of free speech. I have chosen to break my silence on this occasion since the Ali government seems to have no level of shame in making specious claims that can easily be disproved. Further to the information provided by former Minister David Patterson which covered the entire tenure of the Coalition that contradicted the bogus claims of the Ali government, I feel the necessity to expose what appears to be a conspiracy of deception by the Ali government since I had some involvement with GPL at the policy level.
In addressing the spurious claim of the government, it is important to point out that the Electricity Sector Reform Act and GPL’s Licence require that it produce a 5-year Development and Expansion plan. This plan must be adjusted annually on a rolling basis. The plan is a tool for action, measuring performance and holding GPL accountable for the delivery of service promised to the people of this country.
I became involved with GPL during the period May 2019 and August 2020. When I got there, the 2017-2021 and the 2019-2023 plans were already in place. While I was there, the 2020-2024 Plan was developed. A review of this latter plan would show that we had short-term, medium-term and long-term traditional and renewable energy proposals for addressing the electricity needs of this country. This submission will deal only with traditional energy generation. It should not be difficult for the government to make that plan available to the public so that it can understand what the Coalition government had in store for them. If the government has difficulty making the 2020-2024 plan available to the public, I am willing to assist the media in gaining access to it if it has an interest in letting Guyanese know the truth about this matter.
The short-term proposals of our plan included installation of 46.5 MW of power in 2020 and 55.2 MW in 2021, positioning GPL to add 101.7 MW from new investments by 2021. The medium-term proposal included installation of an additional 120 MW of power starting in 2022 which meant that by 2023, Guyana would have had 221.7 MW of generating capacity from new investments and not the 180 MW that the government is now presiding over. The full implementation of our plan would have added an additional 180 MW of power, starting in 2025 and bringing the total new investment to 424 MW no later than 2026. That was the direction in which we were moving when I was chairman of GPL. These proposed new investments were driven by three factors, namely the anticipated level of economic activity stemming from oil becoming part of Guyana’s production structure; the domestic and foreign investment interests that the country was attracting; and the interest which many self-generating users were showing in returning to the national grid. It should be emphasized here that our plan anticipated the return of self-generators to the national grid without them having to be taxed. The Ali government is trying to make this look as if it was an unanticipated development. It is not.
Many might recall my pledge to make blackouts a thing of the past. Before my resignation, GPL was on its way to implementing the above plans that were intended to make that promise a reality. As stated before, our short-term plan for 2020 was to install 46 MW of new power. As we were gearing up to do that, Covid-19 was emerging as a threat. It was only because of strategic thinking, foresight by GPL’s team and understanding of the risk by the APNU+AFC government that we were able to get ahead of the Covid-19 problem and put GPL in a position to install the 46 MW of new generating capacity at Garden of Eden before the end of 2020. At the time of my departure in August 2020, a contract to install the 46.5 MW of power had already been signed, the civil works to accommodate the generators were in an advanced stage of implementation and the generators were already on the way to Guyana.
It should be clear to Guyanese from the foregoing that the investment in the 46.5 MW of new power at a contract cost of US$50 million was added under the APNU+AFC administration in contradiction to what appears to be a deliberate attempt by the current government to mislead the citizens of this country and to hide its own failings. To emphasize the forward thinking that attended the investment at Garden of Eden, let it be known that the new generators were purchased with the intention of using either gas or oil. The public should therefore understand that GPL is already positioned since 2020 to use gas as its energy source. If the government were to run a gas pipeline to the Garden of Eden generating station, with minor adjustments, a gas-to-shore project would already be in existence in Guyana.
One must therefore ponder the motive of the government to clumsily foist blame on the Coalition for the predicament in which it now finds itself. The government does not even seem to realize how silly and deceitful it comes across in making these false statements. Guyanese must be surprised to discover that a government that came to power boasting that it had many transformative projects in hand, and it knew what it was doing, was unaware that it needed to ensure that the energy supply was adequate. Instead of getting busy doing its own electricity needs assessment as required by law, it became comfortable with what APNU+AFC had already done and went off on wild jaunts with all sorts of projects of few direct benefits to the people of this country. It had three years to continue the work of the Coalition and, instead of doing that, it took its eye off the ball.
Now that it has been caught with its pants down, it is hustling to blame APNU+AFC. For the government to be scrambling now to invest in a mere 30 MW of power towards the end of 2023 tells me that it would have ignored any development plans that GPL would have prepared for 2021-2025, 2022-2026 and 2023-2027.
The media should ask GPL if it prepared those plans and if the government took account of them since taking office.
